Tea at Trianon: Languedoc in the Spring

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Sunday, April 21, 2013

Languedoc in the Spring

From a recent traveler to the South of France:

Carcassonne finally fell on my last afternoon. The rampart walks were green with spring grass and several shops and restaurants were still closed, resting before the summer invasion. If you stuck to the edges it was fun: the Château Comtal tour was a lesson in medieval defensive architecture – even if much of it was built in the 19th century – and the Basilica of St Nazaire rang with the sound of a choir.

It was worth visiting just for the relief of a battle in its south transept – so energetic that the medieval knights and their weapons almost exploded out of the stone – and a simple effigy of Simon de Montfort, ambitious 12th-century nobleman, scourge of the Cathars and father to the de Montfort who led an English rebellion against Henry III.

A path wound out of the Port d'Aude, past kitchen staff from the Hotel de la Cité having a fag break before popping back to work via a medieval turret, and led down to the basse ville, a grid of streets between the Aude and Canal du Midi. At the Café Felix on the main square, bavette et frites was the plat du jour and most of the diners were regulars, as they have been since it opened in 1945.

There were zinc bottle drawers behind the bar and on the wall an old photograph of Felix himself, in rugby kit – English rugby is a regional passion – squatting in a vineyard. Above him was a familiar skyline of turrets and towers, battlements and embrasures. Blacker, less perfect, a smile before extensive dental work, but unmistakably my old friend Carcassonne. (Read entire post.)