XVI St. Jean D’Alais
Alais is an ancient city, but greatly modernized; moreover it does not take a supreme rank as a cathedral city, from the fact that it held a bishop’s throne for but a hundred years. Alais was a bishopric only from 1694 to 1790.
The cathedral of St. Jean is an imposing structure of that obtrusive variety of architectural art known as “Louis Quinze,” and is unworthy of the distinction once bestowed upon it.
Perhaps it is due to the fact that the Cevenole country was so largely and aggressively Protestant that the see of Alais did not endure. Robert Louis Stevenson tells of a stranger he met in these mountain parts—that he was a Catholic, “and made no shame of it. No shame of it! The phrase is a piece of natural statistics; for it is the language of one of a minority.... Ireland is still Catholic; the Cevennes still Protestant. Outdoor rustics have not many ideas, but such as they have are hardy plants and thrive flourishingly in persecution.”
Built about in the façade of this unfeeling structure are some remains of a twelfth-century church, but they are not of sufficient bulk or excellence to warrant remark.
An advancing porch stands before this west façade and is surmounted by a massive tower in a poor Gothic style.
The vast interior, like the exterior, is entirely without distinction, though gaudily decorated. There are some good pictures, which, as works of art, are a decided advance over any other attributes of this church—an “Assumption,” attributed to Mignard, in the chapel of the Virgin; in the left transept, a “Virgin” by Deveria; and in the right transept an “Annunciation” by Jalabert.
Alais is by no means a dull place. It is busy with industry, is prosperous, and possesses on a minute scale all the distractions of a great city. It is modern to the very core, so far as appearances go. It has its Boulevard Victor Hugo, its Boulevard Gambetta, and its Lycée Dumas. The Hôpital St. Louis—which has a curious doubly twisted staircase—is of the eighteenth century; a bust of the Marquis de la Fère-Alais, the Cevenole poet, is of the nineteenth; a monument of bronze, to the glory of Pasteur, dates from 1896; and various other bronze and stone memorials about the city all date and perpetuate the name and fame of eighteenth and nineteenth-century notables.
The Musée—another recent creation—occupies the former episcopal residence, of eighteenth-century construction.
The Hôtel de Ville is quite the most charming building of the city. It has fine halls and corridors, and an ample bibliothèque. Its present-day Salle du Conseil was the ancient chamber of the États du Languedoc.