LONDON:
Printed by William Clowes and Sons,
Stamford Street.
A ride on horseback to Florence
CONTENTS
OF VOL. I.
Page 1
Landing at Calais—Meeting of a Custom-House Officer with Fanny—Historical remains—John’s mode of Confession—The Hero malgré lui—The Courtgain—St. Omer’s—The Abbey of St. Bertin and the Cathedral—St. Denis and the miraculous St. Hubert—The strength of the short Pepin—Lillers, and John’s precautions—St. Pol—Doullens, the Citadel and the Corporal—The possession of Doullens by the Huguenots—The taking of Amiens caused by love for a fair Widow—Hernand Teillo’s stratagem—His success chiefly owing to a body of Irishmen—Henry the Fourth’s emotion and resolve—Death of Hernand Teillo—Amiens—The Sunstroke—The warlike show—A religious Picture strangely imagined—The Beffroi and its tragedy—The Cathedral and its Tombs—The travelling Crucifix—The Bishop who sheltered Philip of Valois after the battle of Crecy—The Pavement marked in fatal memorial—The Grave of Hernand Teillo—Characters and portraits of the Canons—The contrite Ass and presentation of an infant, Breteuil
34
Clermont—Château now a penitentiary—A Stronghold of the English in Charles the Sixth’s time—Creil, where Peter the Hermit preached the first Crusade—Charles the Sixth’s place of confinement during his Madness—Chantilly—Écouen—Henry last Duke of Montmorency—Presentiment of his Father—At eighteen created Lord High Admiral—His early love in Languedoc—His prudential Marriage at the Louvre—His Successes at Rochelle—Coldness of Louis the Thirteenth, and jealousy of Richelieu—His gallantry at Veillane—Restoration of Prisoners—Humanity during the plague at Rivoli—His anxiety to become High Constable of France—Richelieu’s injustice—His retirement to Languedoc—Privileges of Languedoc—Prince Gaston’s efforts to win over Montmorency—The Duke’s arrest by Richelieu’s orders, rendered impossible through the people’s affection—Renewed efforts of Gaston—Persuasions of the Duchess—Montmorency’s reluctant consent—Gaston’s indecision and high words with the Duke—Battle of Castelnaudary—His emulation with the Comte de Moret to strike the first blow—The ditch leaped alone as at Veillane—The troops held back by Gaston in sight of his peril—Montmorency overpowered—Dragged from under his dead horse and carried before Schomberg—The female portrait on his arm discovered by a spy, and notice of his wearing it sent to incense the King by the Cardinal—The cries of the people beneath the Palace windows—His farewell to his wife, and legacy to Richelieu—The emotion of his Judges—His condemnation—Religious feeling of his last hours—His farewell to the statue of his Godfather—His calm death, and blood sought for as that of a martyr—His burial among the bones of the Sainted—The imprisonment of his widow—Her sad life—Her taking the veil—Louis the Thirteenth’s visit to her mourning cell and her reply to the Cardinal’s messengers—The King’s remorse—The apparition in the Hall of Écouen—St. Denis—Foundation of the Cathedral by Dagobert, St. Denis having appeared to him in a dream—Miraculous consecration of the church and the leper’s new skin—Tombs—The column to the memory of Francis, erected by Mary of Scotland—Breaking open of the monuments in 1793—Turenne in a glass case—A lock of Henry the Fourth’s beard making a soldier’s moustache—Plunder of a nose by an Englishman—The Caveau of the last Condé—Devotion of a Russian General to Henry the Fourth’s memory—The Cathedral preserved during the Revolution by being converted into a Market-house—Paris
70
Departure under an unlucky star—Essonne—Petit Bourg—The Czar Peter—Fontainebleau—Palace—Apartments of the Emperor Charles the Fifth—Chamber where Pius the Seventh said mass daily—Chapel founded in the seventh century—Cypher of the Saviour and Virgin placed beside those of Henry the Second and Diana of Poitiers—Princess Mary of Orleans—Napoleon’s apartments—Marie Antoinette’s boudoir—Carving by Louis the Sixteenth’s hand—Monaldeschi, favourite of Queen Christina—Gallery where he was murdered—Account of his murder by the Monk who confessed him, of his burial at dusk in the church of Avon—Window thrown open by Henry the Fourth, to announce Louis the Thirteenth’s birth—Gallery of Henry the Second, called Galerie des Réformés—Petition in which they took the name presented here by Coligny—Open chamber above the Donjon—Arch where Louis the Thirteenth was publicly baptized—Biron’s tower—His treason—His denial—His last interview with Henry the Fourth—Napoleon—The Forest—The Comte de Moret, last inhabitant of the Hermitage of Franchard—Fanny’s sagacity—Croix du Grand Veneur—The spectre hunt—Apparition and warning to Henry the Fourth, corroborated by Sully—Avon—Monaldeschi, Christina’s fickle lover—The old church—The fat porter—The grave beneath the Bénitier—The Englishmen’s sacrilege—Monaldeschi their relative—Precautions against travellers
97
Moret—The Nunnery—Louis the Fourteenth’s black daughter—Two useful Saints—Villeneuve la Guyard—-Descriptions deceitful—Strange cure for blood to the head—A River-god on terra-firma—Sens—St. Colombe, Thomas à Becket’s refuge—Villeneuve le Roy—Place where the Vine was first cultivated—Auxerre—The Chapter’s hundred years’ Law-suit concerning fur trimmings—The Canons’ games at ball—The Cathedral occupying the site of the first Christian Chapel—St. Germain—The Saint’s refusal to get out of his Grave to reform England—Tombs of Dukes of Burgundy—Ill-treatment in a Church from a School at its devotions—Lucy le Bois—The Face in a Hole in the Wall—Taken for a beast—Arnay le Duc—La Rochepot—A danger avoided through Grizzle’s affection—An unamiable Carter—Chalons, Cæsar’s head-quarters—Cross seen by Constantine—Punishment of past times for unskilful Physicians—A Prince of Portugal, Monk at St. Laurents—Cathedral
120
Tournus—Greuze’s grave—Mâcon—The walking Wedding—Retirement of a Count of Mâcon, with thirty Knights, to the Abbey of Cluny—Dealings of his Successor with evil spirits—His exit from Earth in the Car of a black Visitor—His son turning Monk through fear—The County sold by his Daughter Alice to France—Bloodless occupation of Mâcon by the Huguenots—Mâcon retaken through bribery by the Marshal of Tavannes—Madame de Tavannes’ mode of increasing her Revenues—Sauteries de Mâcon—Farce of St. Poinct—Assassination of Huguenot Prisoners—Sang froid of Catholic Dames—A Russian noble—Villefranche—Privilege granted to its married men—Descent into Lyons—Monastère des deux Amans, supposed Herod and Herodias—Fortress of Pierre Encise—The Prison of Cinq Mars—Fort commanding the Croix Rousse—Homage paid to the wooden Statue of 1550—Hôtel de l’Europe—View of Fourvières—Its Church escaping violation throughout the Revolution—The Antiquaille on the site of the Palace where Germanicus was born—Traces of fire in Nero’s time—Recollections of Princess Mary of Württemberg—Her love of Art to the last—Nourrit’s Funeral—A Racer’s determination to trot—Going to races—Mistaken for a Candidate—Perrache—Horses, riders, and accoutrements—Triumph of the King’s Fête—A Boat upset—The Tower of the fair German—Croix Rousse—Wretchedness of the Operatives—Causes of Insurrection in 1831—The most ancient Monastery in Gaul—Church of Aisnay
152
Heights of Fourvières—Difficult descent—Trade in relics—Our Lady of Fourvières—Saving Lyons from Cholera—Lunatic patients—Dungeon where the first Christian Bishop was murdered—Roman Ruins—The Christians’ early place of assembly—St. Irénée—A coffin—Subterranean chapels—Bones of the Nine Thousand—The Headsman’s block, and the murmur from the well—Bleeding to death—Marguerite Labarge—Her abode for nine years—Her return to upper air cause of her death—Her family rich residents in Lyons—Mode of saving the soul—Body dispensed with—The Pope’s Bull good for ever—A friend’s arrival—Jardin des Plantes—Riots of November, 1831—The Préfet’s mistake—Capt. de ——.—Defence of the Arsenal with unloaded cannon—The murdered Chef de Bataillon—His assassin’s death—The grief of his opponents—Their usual cruelty and their wild justice—Their eight days’ occupation of Lyons—Capt. de ——’s defence of Arsenal—Bearer of proclamation—Danger—Saved by a former comrade—Interview—Threats—Empty cannon effective—Invitation to dinner—Retreat—The Hôtel de l’Europe closed against its master by a National Guard—Three hundred killed in St. Nizier—The Cathedral—Second Council General—Jaw of St. John—The ivory horn of Roland—Privilege of the Seigneur of Mont d’Or—The first Villeroy Archbishop—Refusal to accept him by the Counts of Lyons—His text and the Dean’s reply—Lyons refuge for the Pazzi—Their monument destroyed in anger by Marie de Médicis—The last Prince of Dauphiné becoming prior of the Jacobin Convention, Paris—Procession in St. Nizier—Chapel of Ste. Philomène—Place des Terreaux
184
Place Bellecour—Louise Labé—Clémence de Bourges—Her desertion by her lover—His death—Her own—Rue de la Belle Cordière—Abd-el-Kader—The fat Cantinière captive—Presented to the Emperor of Morocco—The Emperor’s love—Her obstinacy—Application made to the Consul—Her oaths and blows—Her return—The Savoyard Regiment’s fidelity—Marquis of —— and dogs—Cat massacre—Indignant landlady—Pont de la Guillotière—Bridge at the same spot broken beneath Philip Augustus and Richard Cœur de Lion—Leaving Lyons—Mont Blanc—La Verpelière—Its accommodation—La Tour du Pin—A lovely Country—An auberge—Destructive storms—Pont du Beauvoisin—Curious landlady—Leeches en poste—A smiling country—A wild pass—La Chartreuse—Valley des Échelles—Grotto—Cascade of Cours—Chambéry
209
Chambéry—The Cathedral—The Château—The Chapel—The holy shroud distilling blood—Mules’ refusal to carry the relic away—Respected by the flames—St. Charles of Borromeo’s pilgrimage to its shrine at Turin—Its authenticity denied by Calvin—Drawing made of the Saint Suaire by desire of Philip the Fifth of Spain—Artist on his knees—Savoy—Peter of Savoy favourite of Henry the Third of England—Savoy Palace, his residence—The Green Count Amedée—His tournament—The Emperor Charles the Fourth’s passage—Homage done to the Emperor—The Banquet served by Horsemen—The Carmelites’ whitewash—The Crusade—The Green Count’s embarkation—The Red Count Amedée—His Death-wound in the forest of Lornes—Poison—Physician beheaded—Duel between Estavayer and Grandson—Its real cause—Place of combat—Bourg en Bresse—Otho conquered—His tomb at Lausanne—Duke Amedée’s retreat to Ripaille—His authority delegated to his Son—Six Knights his Companions in the Monastery—Astrologers’ prediction—Author of Peace of Arras—Elected Pope—His renouncement of the Tiara—His return to Ripaille, and death—His tower and those of four of his knights still standing—Fête Dieu—The priest commander of the forces—Les Charmettes—The young Abbé—The old Governor—Censure—Severe laws for small offences—Rejoicings—Montmeillan—Abymes de Myans—The Black Virgin’s power—Chignin—Iron collars—Fortress of Montmeillan—Its resistance—Sully’s stratagem—Proof of the King’s Catholicity—Treason of the Governor—Christina of Savoy’s confessor a captive—His vain intrigues against Richelieu—Richelieu’s anger chiefly excited by a satire written by Père Monod—Monod’s death—Bourget—Amedée the Fifth—Hautecombe—Sepulchre of Counts of Savoy—Tomb of Amedée, who defied to single combat three English Earls—Abbey changed to a manufactory—Spectres of the sovereigns of Savoy—Its restoration
245
Well merited attentions to St. Anthony—The young Countess de S——.—Leeches paying postilions better than the English—General de Boigne—Lemenc and its antiquities—Droit de dépouille of the Bénédictines—Their agreement with the nobles of Chambéry—Ancient vaults beneath the church—Colossal statues feared by the good people of Chambéry—Tomb of an Irish Primate—Calvary—Monument of General de Boigne—His low birth—His struggles—His success in India—The death of his benefactor Sindiah—His gratitude shown towards his heir—The story of his betrayal of Tippoo Saib unfounded—His arrival in England—His marriage with the Marquis of Osmond’s daughter an unhappy one—His return to Chambéry—His benefactions—Created Count—His death—Aix—Its antiquities—Tower and Cascade of Grésy—The friend of Queen Hortense—Her fate—Her monument—Rumilly—Its convent—Siege by Louis the Thirteenth—The courage of a nun—The three privileged houses and discipline of a French soldiery—Frangy, an impertinent innkeeper—Fanny’s wisdom—L’Éluiset—A sweet evening—A bad night—A welcome dawning—Geneva—The fusillades of 94—The Secheron
272
Early history of Geneva—Constitution—Duke Amedée the Eighth—Attempt to become master of Geneva—The Bishop inclined to cede his rights—The opposition of the citizens—Charles the Third—Berthelier—Alliance with Fribourg—His courage—Geneva taken—His refusal to fly—His arrest—A tooth-drawer named his judge—His execution—The news of his death causing the impression he had hoped for—Treaty—The Mamelukes—The Confrères de la Cuiller—Advance of Berne and Fribourg—Charles the Third’s forced concessions—Want of generosity in the Bernese—Noble conduct of Geneva—Protestant religion gaining strength—Bonnivard—Seized on the Jura—Cast into the dungeons of Chillon—Disputes in Geneva—The Grand Council decides that mass be abolished—Francis the First—Berne declares war against Savoy—Her alliance with Francis—The Duke of Savoy’s losses—Berne’s renewed misconduct—Proud reply of the Genevese—Bonnivard delivered—Calvin—His early life—His flight from Paris—His reception by Marguerite of Navarre—Persecution of Francis—Calvin’s reception by Louis the Twelfth’s Daughter—Geneva—His over severity—His expulsion—His return—His iron rule—Michael Servet—His irritating conduct towards Calvin—Calvin’s vow to be revenged—Servet’s arrest—His escape—Tracked by Calvin—Taken prisoner on his passage through Geneva—He is accused—Calvin’s valet—Burned at the stake outside the walls of Geneva
296
A vain Stork—A German coachmaker—Coppet—Ferney—Voltaire’s Church—His habitation—Crockery Cenotaph—Shoe-blacking in his study—The old Gardener—The morning rehearsals in tragic costume—The story of Gibbon—Voltaire catching his pet mare—Gibbon’s opinion of Voltaire’s beauty—Their reconciliation—The tree which shaded Franklin—The increase of his village—The marble pyramid broken—The gardener’s petites antiquités and cross wife—Voltaire’s opinions of his correspondents—His remains the property of a maimed Englishman—Denial to a visitor—His heart in the larder—Genevese pride—Swiss troops—Swiss penitentiaries—Genevese smuggling—The Directeur Général des Douaness an unwilling accomplice—D’Aubigné interred in the cathedral—The Cardinal de Brogny—A swineherd—Shoes bestowed in charity—The boy become a cardinal—The poor shoemaker rewarded—His compassion for John Huss—Courageous death of the latter—De Brogny’s charity—A modest genius and tolerant cardinal
321
Arrival of friends—Excursion to Chamouny—The Voiron mountain—Its monastery—The Babes in the wood—Old castle of Faucigny—Its last possessor—Her rights over Dauphiny bequeathed to Savoy—Long war with France—Bonneville—Cluses—Wretched inhabitants—The baronial capital in the time of the old lords—Cavern of La Balme—The village of Arache, and Falquet—The Nant d’Arpenas—Sallenches—Mont Blanc—The lake of Chède filled up—Pont Pelissier—Les Motets—The Glacier des Bossons—Evening—A tranquil night—Morning cavalcade—My guide—The Montanvert—Fontaine du Caillet—Source of the Aveiron—The avalanche—Mer de Glace—Passage of cattle—Priory of Chamouny founded in eleventh century—The Grands Mulets on Mont Blanc—Character of the inhabitants of Chamouny—Return—Versoix destined by Louis the Fourteenth for Geneva’s rival—Coppet—The monument—Old castle of Wufflens—Bertha—Morges—Lausanne—Cathedral containing tomb of Duke Amedée and Bernard de Menthon—The Faucon—The fat innkeeper abandoned—Vevay—Trois Couronnes
CHAPTER I.
Landing at Calais—Meeting of a Custom-House Officer with Fanny—Historical remains—John’s mode of Confession—The Hero malgré lui—The Courtgain—St. Omer’s—The Abbey of St. Bertin and the Cathedral—St. Denis and the miraculous St. Hubert—The Strength of the short Pepin—Lillers, and John’s precautions—St. Pol—Doullens, the Citadel and the Corporal—The possession of Doullens by the Huguenots—The taking of Amiens caused by love for a fair Widow—Hernand Teillo’s stratagem—His success chiefly owing to a body of Irishmen—Henry the Fourth’s emotion and resolve—Death of Hernand Teillo—Amiens—The Sunstroke—The warlike show—A religious Picture strangely imagined—The Beffroi and its tragedy—The Cathedral and its Tombs—The travelling Crucifix—The Bishop who sheltered Philip of Valois after the battle of Crecy—The Pavement marked in fatal memorial—The Grave of Hernand Teillo—Characters and Portraits of the Canons—The contrite Ass and presentation of an infant, Breteuil.
Wednesday, July the 5th 1838.
Hotel de Meurice, à Calais.
My dear William,
When we called on you a few weeks since, on our ride from Liverpool to Dover, you desired a journal of that which was to follow across France and to Florence. We embarked, then, at seven in the morning of the 4th of July, with no wind, but a heavy swell and drizzling rain: D—— and myself, Fanny and the patient Grizzel in their horse boxes, with John (from Cork!) beside them, combing tails and rubbing curb-chains—his resource against ennui. Landed at ten: Fanny profiting by her first free moment to bite a douanier who caressed her; and from his calling obtained no more pity from the bystanders than from John, who was grinning derision at his “big ear-ring.” Worried by the Customhouse, though we have nothing contraband. The signalement of the horses taken with care and gravity: it would suit any grey mare and bay pony in the world. The officers do not quite understand the shining of their coats, and (supposing them cleaned after the fashion of spoons) asked John “with what powder?” he has been rather awed by the ceremony of receiving his passport, particularly when standing up to be measured and described. We remain here three days, as the inn is exceedingly comfortable, but there is very little to see; on the Grande Place, near the lighthouse tower, stood, even in 1830, the ruins of the old Halle, where John de Vienne the governor, and Sire Walter de Mauny communicated the hard terms of surrender to Eustache St. Pierre: there is no trace of it now. The site of St. Pierre’s house is marked by a neat marble slab, at the corner of the street which bears his name. The building still called “Cour de Guise,” though it has been turned to various purposes, rebuilt and altered, was the wool staple originally built by Edward the Third of England; and afterwards bestowed on Guise the Balafré, in reward of his services when he retook Calais from the English in 1577. The church has little worth notice excepting its altar. The vessel, which in Louis the Thirteenth’s time bore it from Genoa, on its way to Antwerp, was wrecked on the Calais coast. With its bassi-relievi and crowd of statues and marble columns, it wants simplicity, and is too large for the place it occupies; for the roof appears to crush the glory of the Saviour. The old Suisse who shows the church is most proud of a Last Supper carved in relief, gilded and coloured: he knocks on the head the little figure of Christ to prove his assertion, “Monsieur c’est en bois!”
In the old revolution this church was unprofaned: a Club built before it masked its entrance; and the then mayor of Calais warned Lebon that he might enter if he would, but that he could not answer for the temper of his townsmen.
The chief building in Calais is the Hôtel de Ville with its handsome tower, and a clock which has a sweet clear chime; before it, each on its pedestal, are the busts of Richelieu and Guise le Balafré: that of Eustache St. Pierre holds the place of honour on the façade. To reward for the trouble of walking up stairs, the old woman only exhibited two rooms, “là où l’on marie” and “là où l’on reçoit,” she called them: in the latter, Louis Philip, whom the artist intended to smile, and who sneers instead, occupies the wall opposite a Surrender of Calais. The citadel is forbidden ground; we were turned back by the sentinel, as we were proceeding to search for the ruins of the Chateau of Calais, in which, by Richard the Second’s order, the Duke of Gloucester was imprisoned and murdered; they are built into a bastion, called that of the “Vieux Chateau.”
John has decided that eating a dinner in France is the most wonderful thing which has happened to him yet. He describes the spreading a white cloth over his knees preparatory to serving up soup, fish, made dishes and dessert; he has made acquaintance with the “Garçon d’Ecurie,” whose thin tall figure is a contrast to his own, with its round head and bowed legs. They keep up a conversation of signs and contortions; this hot day they have passed seated in a wheelbarrow on the sunny side of the court-yard: it was first Pierre’s place of repose, but beginning by sitting on the wheel, and encroaching by degrees, John made it so uncomfortable to his comrade, that he gained sole possession, and is now coiled up asleep. He told me this morning that he must go to church, the Irish father by whom he was married a month ago not having “quite done with him in the way of confession:” I represented that these priests were Frenchmen; that he said was of no consequence, “Clargy spaking all kinds of languages.” He knew but one exception, and that was the very father who married him and could not speak Irish; it was he who (by John’s account) gave him a blow when instead of the fifteen shillings he demanded he offered him five.
The stout waiter François, known for four and twenty years at the hotel, is as perfect a specimen of French nature in his class, as is John of that of Ireland. He informed me he had lately crossed to England; an ordinary intellect would have supposed it was to see the country, or the coronation, but no, it was to see Lablache! and being in London he also saw Taglioni!! and her dancing, he said, went to his very soul. While we were at dinner, a fair girl, with a wrinkled old woman on her arm, looked in at the window and touched a bad guitar: I said we wanted no music, and François scolded her away, but as he stooped down to arrange the fire, muttered in a low voice, “It was true that she was troublesome, and had only one excuse, she supported her old mother.” We gave her something, and François, whose face had grown radiant, told us his own story, and how he had worked from a boy with the hope of assisting his father, and at last had purchased him an annuity of 600 francs, which the old man had enjoyed thirteen years, proud in the gift of a son, who, like Corporal Trim, thought that “Honour thy father and thy mother” meant allowing them a part of his earnings. “He had been looked on as the best son of the province;” and his own child had promised well likewise but he died—he thought he might have weathered the storm, but death, François said, was the strongest and not to be battled with; and with a mixture of feeling and philosophy, as he changed my soup-plate, he shook his head and added, “que voulez-vous?”
D—— misses a Commissionaire, a civil fellow well known to all who frequented the Hotel Meurice, his story being romantic from its commencement; he has become a hero malgré lui; he was brought from Portugal when a child by an officer of the 11th Regiment, and left here when the army of occupation quitted France. He travelled to Paris in the July of 1830 and was there surprised by the revolution. Being of a peaceable temper he hid himself within doors; through some unlucky window a ball came and grazed his arm, and, determined to profit by events if possible, as soon as danger was passed he emerged, showing his wounds and claiming cross and pension; he has obtained both as due to his merit, and is now a “gros portier dans un hôtel de libéral.” We walked this lovely evening past the Courtgain to the Pier. The Courtgain is the fishermen’s quarter, being nothing more than a large bastion ceded them, with permission to build, in 1622; it contains seven very narrow streets. We watched the fishing-boats towed out against wind and tide by their owners’ wives and daughters; the men look picturesque in their red caps and high boots, and they crawl through the mud and up the sides of their craft, with two oars serving for ladder, with the dexterity of cats. It blew fresh this evening; the boats were out at sea a few moments after the women let go the ropes at the pier head. They did not murmur at their hard work, nor did sign or token offer them thanks for it. The skiffs sailed on and they just glanced at them as they lessened in the distance, and returned dragging along and scolding disobedient children; yet the sky was wild though the sun shone; sufficiently stormy to make one wonder they looked no longer.
St. Omer, July 8th, Grande St. Catherine.
One may certainly ride from Calais hither, and say “it is all barren.” The soil seems a deep sand, and we wondered that it could produce even thin wheat and dry grass; crossed the “Pont Sans pareil,” which is thrown over the two canals, where they meet at right angles. Twenty-six miles of broad straight road, only enlivened by a few pollarded trees, a great many windmills, some melancholy red chateaux with great gates and long avenues, and here and there villages of wretched cabins each in its unwholesome enclosure; the green pond in front and the tall trees around it: the group surmounted by a spire. Such as they are, they give the dead flat a look of the living: but they are scantily scattered. Left Ardres to the right: it has been a strong place, and is going to decay. Guines is farther on, and the field of “Cloth of Gold,” which still bears its name, lies between them, but not on the road: but for D——’s recollection of 1815, and some interest in tracing his old quarters, it would have been duller still.
Approached St. Omer at last: rode between rows of stripped elms with deplorable heads; through a long suburb; along a fine avenue skirting the fortifications, over bridges and drawbridges unending, and we were in the town. This is a good inn. We walked after dinner to see the Abbey of St. Bertin; our guide the “grosse fille d’auberge.” Its interior was burned in the old revolution, and the “Conseil Municipal,” judging the safety of the townsmen endangered, has caused all to be taken down, saving a side wall and its beautiful tower. English visitors still ascend the latter for the sake of the view, but it must be a work of danger; it is cracked to the very top, and bends awfully. Over its porch was a fresco painting, whose outline and some faded colours remain, and above it, sown there by some of the winds of heaven, grows and flourishes a young pear tree.
We seated ourselves on some timber to look at the sunset and the falling abbey, and the fille d’auberge sat down also. She said all the small houses round were inhabited by English, who admire ruins “furieusement.” When she was tired of talking she remembered she was wanted and left us. We returned ourselves through handsome desolate streets, passing some hotels of Louis the Thirteenth’s time, and many Spanish houses, of I presume Queen Elizabeth’s date, for they exhibit the gable peaked or in-steps of stone, but have an ugly addition of shell-like ornaments over doors and windows. The Place du Haut Pont, which we crossed, is surrounded by these. The Place itself, with its crooked canal crossed by a wooden bridge and disappearing under a dark arch of some ancient building—the boats lying on the water ready to depart for Dunkirk—a group of people collected on its edge round a street singer—looked in the red indistinct light like a Dutch picture or a fragment of opera scenery.
July 9th.
The cathedral is very fine, and we regretted that an exceedingly gruff Suisse would not allow us to stay more than five minutes in the lovely Gothic chapel behind the altar, which would be faultless, but that it is over-painted and gilded. Above the altar is a Crucifixion in stone, with a background of stained glass, through which the light comes on it with great effect, but rather theatrically. At the foot of the altar steps was a female figure in almost modern costume, seated on the floor, looking like a great wooden doll. What she does there I cannot say, and the Suisse left me no time to examine. We were obliged to rest satisfied with a passing glimpse of this, and the “grilles de chapelles,” on either side, in fine Italian marble, and the tomb in the nave of some monk or bishop who lies here in costly effigy. We went thence to St. Denis. Its exterior in some degree resembles St. Bertin and Nôtre Dame, as its square tower has the same character, but it has been pieced and renewed within. It was “fête” in this church, an old man said, and to do it honour the high altar was ornamented with hundreds of roses, and myrtle and orange-trees in their tubs, ranged in the choir beneath the church banners. On the right of the choir is the altar of the “Sacré Cœur,” on either side of which hang strings of silver hearts as big as the palm of the hand, offerings of the faithful!
On the left, in a hole sunk in the wall, framed and lined with room-paper, except on festivals screened from profane eyes by little pink calico curtains, is a gilded bust of St. Bertin, adorned with steel court buttons. Walking down the aisle on this side we arrived before the chapel of St. Hubert; we looked through the grille, and saw on the opposite wall a larger recess, its folding-doors thrown back for the holiday. Within, the saint (a foot high) kneels in a flowing wig and Roman toga! a tiny tin cor de chasse, such as you have seen on the caps of the light infantry of the National Guard, tacked to his side! The background, a piece of room-paper representing a great green tree; on which (in relief of course) shines out a second and similar hunting horn! The saint’s dog, in an attitude of astonishment, gazes, as does Hubert, on a small wooden stag, who stands on a rock; the Crucifix and two Thieves springing from his forehead in place of antlers. Below is written, “The Conversion of St. Hubert.”
In a second recess of the same chapel, St. Hubert reappears, rewarded; in gilded canonicals and holding a bunch of flowers, but still hangs at his girdle, to prove his identity, the tin cor de chasse of the bonnet de Voltigeurs.
I saw lower down a devout inscription praying that “St. Joseph’s presence in that spot might protect all carpenters,” and near the entrance an ancient basso relievo brought from the tomb of the Abbot of St. Bertin.
We walked on to the college, and round its fine courts. Some of the buildings bear the date of Francis the First, but the church and college themselves were erected by the Jesuits in the time of their power—1629. The former merely presents to the street a high ornamented gable, and a vast space within not worth looking at. Its curiosities (placed here temporarily) are some bassi relievi of Spanish processions, dug up some miles from St. Omer, and a group representing St. Pepin (who was the dwarf of his century) killing with his fist a lion, who is gnawing a bull.
The fire-engines are also here till the Hôtel de Ville, which is in progress, shall be ready to house them. I was surprised to see their buckets are baskets saturated with pitch, and hempen vessels of the same form, and to hear they answer perfectly. We walked on the ramparts which command the view of the prodigiously strong fortifications, and the flat, which can at pleasure be inundated a mile round; but like the broad desolate streets, the prospect is surpassingly melancholy.
Lillers, Hotel de la Poste, July 10th.
A fine avenue, leaving St. Omer; and a rather more interesting country, through which flows the little river. One hill in the distance (which we took for Cassel) breaking the flat, and here and there, some rather pretty looking hamlets—each cabin within its prairie; but between these no sign of habitation. The light sandy soil is extremely cultivated, and the unending plain less sad now than it will be later in the season, as the corn is in ear, and the bean and poppy fields are in blossom. From the seed of this purple and white poppy is expressed salad oil. Aire, which we passed through, is a picturesque, fortified town, its ramparts shaded with fine green trees. Beyond Aire, on each side of the grand route, are numberless gardens, and it was gay and sweet with flowers.
At every mile we pass a “petite chapelle,” being usually a small wooden case with a glass door, perched on a pole, planted at the road-side; and within, a tiny figure of the virgin, attired in white muslin. I saw Nôtre Dame de Grâce, Nôtre Dame de Guerison, and Nôtre Dame de Bonne Fin; the last with no great pleasure, thinking she might be there installed on account of the arrival of the black fever, which is in Flanders. We fancied the villagers looked pale, and passed at a gallop.
John had arrived before us at Lillers; and fearing the diligence had taken him too far, and unable to ask the name of the place in which he was deposited, he locked up our baggage in a room of the inn, and, with the great key in his hand, was contemplating a walk back to St. Omer. This inn is a mere farm-house with bad accommodation; the landlord and his friends sat smoking in the room where we dined; he regrets we will not walk three quarters of a league to the fête, and the servant and the landlady’s daughter are now describing Dominique’s dancing, and a minute ago had nearly come to high words about Dominique.
St. Pol, July 11th.
Started in burning weather, having found no conveyance for John, who trudged after cheerfully, though he says “it is these straight roads what breaks the heart of a traveller.” Stopped to rest whenever the shade of a bush made it possible, for the fine trees which grew here as well as on most of the grandes routes of France are all felled. Saw no traveller, excepting a white haired bishop, in his purple robes, who passed in his carriage. John said “he would have kneeled to ax a blessing but he took him for an officer;” at last we came up with a petite voiture, within which we deposited John, who directly commenced a conversation no one was likely to sustain. Arrived here ourselves, having suffered a good deal from the intense heat; and drank some beer which a peasant sold at four sous a quart, and explained to her how I sat on Fanny having no one behind to hold me on. Avoid this inn on pain of bad meat, and bad beds, and mistakes in the bill. Strolled out, for refreshment, in the heavy dew, and finding a rather pretty walk compared to the frightful plain, hailed as if it had been Swiss scenery the dry bed of a little stream with a bridge and broken bank, shaded by young birch trees, and a path winding upwards from it through corn and bean fields and a tiny copse to the town.
Doullens, le Grand Turc, July 12th.
Left St. Pol at four in the afternoon, to avoid the heat, and found it still so excessive that we sat under the shade of the first trees we found, and let the horses feed until the sun declined. John was to follow in the “Service des Dépêches,” a heavy cab with a raw-boned horse. The peasantry hereabouts are worse lodged and more filthy than between Calais and St. Omer. Woe to whom penetrate within the prairie, or step across the floor. The evening grew dark so suddenly that we had some trouble in finding (not the road, for there are no cross-ways or green lanes) but its least stony part, in the steep rough descent to Doullens; took a poppy field for a lake; it struck ten as we arrived in the bad air of the narrow street, where reigns the Grand Turk the moon rising as our ride ended. John appeared in the mail a few minutes after; it had changed horses on the road, but certainly not fatigued either, for ours were not put out of a walk. The fille d’auberge blinded me by holding her candle in my face to examine hat, habit, and wearer, before she thought proper to lead the way to a room. The atmosphere abominable, and the draught which, when I threw open the windows, came in from the narrow street and dirty yard, worse than the air it expelled. Nothing to be had but café au lait and cherries, but the beds comfortable and the dark-eyed bonne good humoured. She swept the room before breakfast this morning, and the floor bore witness to its being a favour.
We walked to the citadel, which is just without the town, now occupied by only twenty-five men; a pretty avenue leads to it up the glacis. We were admitted without difficulty, though with some formality. The soldier at the gate summoned the Corporal; the Corporal asked permission of the Commandant, and returned to conduct us across the two drawbridges. The form of the citadel is a square, flanked at each angle by a bastion, and defended by outworks. From his manners and conversation, the Corporal might have been a nobleman—for he had perfect ease and no familiarity; he offered his hand to assist me in climbing where it was rough and steep, but only when assistance was necessary. On the side of the citadel furthest from the town is the place where political offenders were confined some years back; it is a fort within a fort, and has its own defences. The rampart commands it, and its sentinel kept a constant look out, yet, in spite of all precautions, some escaped. They were retaken, but unpunished, Louis Philip having shortly after proclaimed his “general amnesty.” Subterranean passages opening from this citadel conduct to the town, and completely mine it. The heat was so intense that we could not make the entire tour, though it was only eleven o’clock; the Corporal regretted being deprived of the pleasure of accompanying us further, and accepted the silver put in his hand without looking at it, and with seeming reluctance, as a physician does his first fee.
Doullens has belonged to many masters: to the Huguenots during the wars of religion, then to their enemies, afterwards to the Spaniards, who took it when Henry the Fourth was yet unsettled on his throne. It was in 1595, and the surprise of Amiens, which took place two years after, was accomplished by the governor of Doullens’ love for a fair widow. The governor was the famous Captain Hernand Teillo, and the lady the Dame de Monchy, who was rich as well as noble and beautiful. “I was born at Amiens,” she replied proudly, when he besought her to accept his hand: “I will espouse no man unless we obey the same royal master; either abandon the King of Spain and become French as I am, or take Amiens and make me a Spanish subject.”
Adopting this last alternative, and having sworn to succeed, the Spaniard Hernand Teillo marched with his troops towards Amiens; before day broke a strong detachment lay concealed behind hedges near the town, the chapel of St. Montain and la Madelaine were occupied, and the cavalry concealed in a valley; at dawn, Hernand Teillo having made choice of sixteen soldiers and four officers on whose resolution he could rely, disguised the former as peasants and market women, and sent them by different paths to the gate of Amiens, carrying on their backs market baskets of walnuts and apples; the four officers, disguised in like manner, walked beside a heavy cart laden with wood covered over with straw; one acting as waggoner. The movement of troops, however secretly made, could not be entirely concealed, and some peasants not counterfeits apprized the governor of Amiens of what was passing; it was said he had been bought over, at all events he treated it as an idle report. At six o’clock, the gates of the town being opened, the sixteen soldiers, preceded by their officers and waggon, boldly presented themselves for admission at the gate called Montre Écu; arrived under the entrance arch, the waggon stopped, and the waggoner silently cut the traces that the portcullis might be arrested in its fall; at the same moment, one of the pretended peasants undid, as if by mistake, the cord which fastened the mouth of a sack of walnuts, and its contents were scattered on the pavement. The guard was composed of wretched mechanics (for Amiens, in her pride, had refused a royal garrison); they abandoned their post to seize on the prize, and the Spaniards, drawing their arms from beneath their clothes, in the course of a few moments had massacred their unresisting enemies, and gained possession of the guard house. The sentinel placed on the gate heard the cries of the wounded, and cut the ropes which upheld the portcullis, but the waggon was exactly beneath, and the portcullis fell on it and fixed it there, leaving the way open to the foe. The citizens roused, came in numbers to repulse the Spaniards who poured in, and to a body of Irishmen under his command Hernand Teillo owed in a great measure his success. In their gallant defence of the town, perished numbers of its inhabitants: the Comte de St. Pol, governor of the province, failed to imitate their noble example; for he fled, as soon as from the tower of the royal chateau he inhabited he recognised the red scarfs of the Spaniards. The townsmen were disarmed the same day; the sack of Amiens permitted for eight more; and these past, the already ruined citizens reduced to starvation by the exaction of heavy sums of money. Married to the Lady of Monchy, Hernand Teillo was rewarded for his success: and Henry the Fourth of France, after a night passed at a ball, had just lain down to rest when the courier arrived with news of the surprise of Amiens. Sully was summoned to his bedside, and Henry, grasping his hand in strong emotion, said, “I have played the part of king of France long enough; I must return to that of king of Navarre.”
All the nobility of France encamped before Amiens; the effective force amounted to 18,000 men, and Hernand Teillo, reduced to extremity, implored the assistance of the Archduke Albert, who was at Arras, and who arrived at the head of 4,000 horse and 15,000 foot. It is told that the day on which Henry was informed of their approach, he rode to a height whence he could distinguish the Spanish army advancing in good order; and leaning over his saddle bow, he prayed heaven, “If his sins deserved heavy punishment to strike the guilty: but not to scatter the flock for the fault of the shepherd.”
Hernand Teillo never knew that relief was so near; he had already fallen by a musket shot, near the Porte de Montre Écu—that very gate by which he entered. Beside it canvass had been spread to conceal the workmen while they repaired the breaches made in the rampart: a French soldier fancied he saw a shade through, and fired—it was Hernand Teillo. His successor Montenegro surrendered Amiens to King Henry on the 25th of September.
We left Doullens at twelve, for I thought no sun could be so terrible as the Grand Turk’s air; but the heat proved more intense than I ever felt it in France, and whenever we found shade, which was but three times, we stopped exhausted. Overtook, travelling at this rate, John in the diligence; woke a half-naked child which was blistering in the sun; let the horses drink in a pool of abomination, and bought sour wine for ourselves—though the greasy glass clasped in the black paw almost conquered thirst. We began to feel the effect of the rays on our head; I could not without consideration recollect where we were—and talking became so painful, that we rode some hours in perfect silence, till we came to a few yards of turf under half a dozen trees, the first for miles; it was like a bit of paradise. We staid there, the horses feeding till the sun was low; and even then the heat seemed undiminished, and the remaining three leagues interminable, for cathedral and town being built in a hollow, the former towers in sight long before houses are visible. Just as we were reviving in expectation of an inn we came to a windmill, slowly turning its sails in the light air, and throwing long shadows, changing as they turned, on the road before the horses’ feet: it proved a foe to us as it did of yore to Don Quixote; Fanny kicked, and the patient Grizzel plunged, and a half hour’s course of backing and beating was necessary to induce them to pass. When we dismounted at the Hôtel d’Angleterre a fat old gentleman, an “habitué,” seated on the wicker-seat on the shady side of the Cour under the Laurier-rose, asked the landlady, if we could be in our senses who travelled in such weather, and in such a way? but D—— has suffered no injury, and I, saving faintness and giddiness, have escaped also.
13th July.
We are warned against repeating our folly, by the sight of a poor fellow, who, as I crossed the court-yard, I found placed there in a chair between two women, one of whom was sobbing violently; I asked “what ailed her?” She said she was his sister, and the other his wife; that he had quitted home to come on a journey here, and two days before on the river had received a sunstroke. They were sent for, and came instantly: he had not recognized them or spoken; the physician said his tongue was paralyzed. He had always been a good husband, yet now when his fits of fury came on, his violence was wholly directed against his wife,—(I had not noticed before that he wore a strait waistcoat): the poor wife said nothing; she leaned on his chair looking at him with red eyes, which seemed to have no moisture left; and only shook her head, when her sister added, that the Doctor rested a last hope on his being taken home to his children. I inquired if they wanted money? She said, “they had been comfortable while they depended on him, and would try to aid him in turn;” she seemed too miserable to care about it, or even glance at what was given her. The horses were put to a few minutes after, and they led him to the coach; he walked like a man in his sleep, and I think his sight is impaired, for tho’ his face was flushed, his eyes were like stone. While we were at the table d’hôte, a very undaunted looking ballad-singer brought her harp to the door, and reaped a good harvest: the landlord tried to get up a subscription for the unfortunate peasant, but failed.
Here is the prettiest fair in the world: but held within the precincts of an ancient church and monastery, whose outer wall, still standing, exhibits the remains of fine tombs defaced and broken: part of the cloister, its arches filled up with masonry, is there also; and these make strange boundaries to ranges of shops forming streets between avenues of lime-trees, shows and buffoons, feats of horsemanship and rope-dancing. If the nuns who lie beneath the old monuments could look forth, they would understand the meaning of revolution. We walked to the fair after dinner, when it was brilliantly lighted, and the gay standings and green branches showed to advantage. It is the resort of the beau monde of Amiens, and its theatres and temporary cafés were crowded. I asked the meaning of the frequent discharges of musketry we heard—“Madame,” said a grave shopman, “c’est la prise de Constantine!”
The exhibition of paintings by Amiens artists is held in the Hôtel de Ville, and does them no great honour: the subject of one picture you will think curious. I copy from the catalogue: “Christmas Eve: some good children are employed in reverently gathering together miraculous playthings, sent them by the Enfant Jésus down the chimney”!!!
The Gaol joins the Hôtel de Ville. As we came out, we saw a crowd collected round a large machine like an omnibus, except that it received light and air from apertures in its roof: it was marked “Service des Prisonniers,” and is destined to convey some convicts to Bicêtre to-night: a better mode of transport than dragging them along the road in chains.
The Beffroi, a strange looking tower which rises alone on the Place de l'Hôtel de Ville, now serves as a prison for minor offences: it contains the great bell tolled on solemn occasions. It is said that this tower was raised by Louis le Gros, but the town records make no mention of it till the year 1244; it has been twice consumed by fire—the first time in 1524, when it was the scene of an awful tragedy. The keeper had ascended to the lantern at its top before the flames broke forth: and when about to descend, found, to his horror, that smoke and fire barred his passage. He attempted to force his way, and they drove him back; he rushed to the top once more, and shrieked for assistance to the terrified crowd: it was impossible to afford it; and as the floor heated beneath his feet, he implored, in his agony, that some one present would fire on him. His sad prayer was granted; and having recommended his soul to God, he fell dead from a harquebuss shot.
There is a fine “Établissement des Bains” near our hôtel, supplied by the river, but before you go thither, do not, as I did, walk in view of the filthy buildings which hang over the Somme, as the muddy water causes disagreeable associations, particularly as it also washes the walls of the church in the principal street, now converted into a splendid hospital.
I have said nothing of the Cathedral, yet there we have passed the greater portion of our time; and for its sake remain three days at Amiens. Its foundations were laid in 1220, when Everard was Bishop of Amiens, and Louis the Eighth King of France. Excepting its towers, it was finished about 1288.
415 feet long within, 132 in height, its proportions are so perfect, that its size fails to strike, except by comparison. I was made aware of it only by looking at a human figure in the aisle. What a pity that bad taste should have covered a great part of the carved stone work, and several tombs in the chapels, with painted and gilt wainscotings! Among the latter, one in black marble of the churchman who united Isabella of Bavaria, of infamous memory, to Charles the Sixth, the royal maniac. The gilding of the altar, railings, &c. was lately renewed by the testamentary donation of an Englishman, who, together with his wife and family, embraced the Catholic religion here. They were converted, the landlady tells me, by the wife of the English clergyman! who herself had abjured protestantism shortly before!! The little angel, who beside the kneeling figure of a bishop weeps behind the high altar, was so prized by the English, that it is said they offered to purchase him for his weight in gold. He sits with his head leaned on his hand, and his legs hung carelessly down—an image of all-absorbing sorrow. The monument was an offering of gratitude from its sculptor to the memory of the prelate who had been his patron; but why an ill-executed figure of the Virgin is placed so close as to spoil the effect, no one can tell.
The organ is voiceless still, notwithstanding the 40,000 francs spent this year on its repair.
As we are to leave Amiens in the morning, we returned to the Cathedral after dinner, as I wished, in company of its Suisse, to walk round it once more—but that this man is straight, and has two eyes, he might be the original of Quasimodo. We were too early, and staid outside to look again at the three beautiful porches, deeply sunk in the noble façade, among whose multitude of carved saints innumerable birds have built their nests, in cavities made by decapitated heads, and limbs wanting; they were flying about in quantities. As we entered, the priest was about to conclude his evening sermon; we waited its close, and I thought I had not seen the cathedral to advantage before. The weather was burning and cloudless; and while the coloured rosace of the transept opposite us looked deeper and richer, because, not fronting the west, it admitted no sunbeams; they came through a side window, and the whole cross aisle was a flood of light: roof, columns, and arches illuminated in all their details; and the figure of Fenelon’s friend, half reclined on his tomb, seemed about to start up. Through the stained glass of the large rose above the organ, and the smaller one on each side, the glory from the west streamed in likewise, brightening the gay dresses of the still congregation, and the bare head of the energetic priest, and the pulpit, supported by the three Cardinal Virtues, and surmounted by an angel whose foot seems hardly to rest on its roof, and whose hand points upward. You would have moralized on the Virtues cowering in shadow, and the winged form above them (like their emanation) floating in splendour.
The Suisse came to conduct us: his pride seemed centered in the cathedral, and in the study of its walls he says he has passed wakeful nights. The two bronzed monuments, hardly raised from the floor to right and left of the principal entrance, a human figure rudely outlined on each, are those of the founder Everard and his successor Godefroy.
Walking up the left-hand aisle, the Suisse pointed to the Crucifix Miraculeux: it is of the seventh century, clad in long gilded robes, wearing an expression, not of pain, but triumph; such being the mode of representing the Saviour before the time of Charlemagne. The miracle on which rests its fame consists in a change of lodging it one night effected, for it was originally placed in a chapel on the right of the nave. Why it preferred one opposite, the tradition does not tell.
Here, where the transept crosses the nave, is the tomb of the ambassador who negotiated peace between Francis the First of France and the Emperor Charles. The emblematical figures are those of Force wresting a Salamander from the grasp of Peace—Francis paid tribute. An altar opposite, erected during a plague, conceals the monument of a bishop, who, holding the see of Amiens at the period of the battle of Crecy, received and sheltered Philip of Valois. A pavement stone in the transept marks the grave of Gresset. The chapel near contains, in a superb reliquary, a piece of the skull of John the Baptist! and each time we have visited the cathedral, we have seen the same old lady kneeling before it, in immovable devotion. The curious stone screen raised outside the choir represents the various events of John the Baptist’s life; the small figures, though rudely drawn, have great expression; arches, canopies and pinnacles, carved above them in the same stone, form a light and beautiful frame. Formerly this screen surrounded the choir; the taste of Louis the Fifteenth’s time substituted the gilt bronze railing. The Suisse stopped a moment to admire the weeping cherub and criticise (not unskilfully) a beautiful Virgin, carved by the same hand, in the chapel, behind the high altar. A few steps further, the pavement stones for a considerable space are marked each with a deeply carved cross. It would seem that here, during the religious wars, there once took place a conflict between Huguenots and Catholics, in which many of the latter died. The pavement of the transept has one grave-stone more near the side entrance to the right; the initials it bears are H. T. (Hernand Teillo), for he was buried here; and it was of him that Henry the Fourth, viewing his small armour, said, “I had not believed so mighty a spirit could be lodged so narrowly!”
The carving of the screen, the canons’ seats, &c. of the choir, as they are celebrated for their beauty, we wished to see nearer; but their exhibition did not lie in our cicerone’s department—he went in search of a fat woman who has the key in charge. “Monsieur,” he said, smiling as he presented her, “c’est la dame du cœur!”
The sculptor of this fairy-work was by agreement bound to sacred subjects; and only an oversight left to his own taste the adorning of the wood-work which divides the canons’ seats. The artist was acquainted with their persons and histories; and when his task was done, each found his elbow resting on an indiscreet allusion to his life or himself. Some chafed over their own grotesque portraits; a meek looking young ass dressed in canonicals gazed sympathetically in the face of another; and the most unkindly treated of all beheld his own figure in a contrite attitude, his own hands receiving an infant from the hands of a lady! We staid in the cathedral till the daylight failed; and the high roof looked loftier when we could barely distinguish where it rested on the groups of slender columns. It will be long ere we forget its beauty, and the beautiful changes of its aspect; from the time its three portals thrown open after evening service admitted the whole flood of sunset, which lit it up as for a rejoicing, till the glow had faded; which it did so slowly, as if it had been loth to leave it.
Went to bed at twelve; a violent thunder-storm; up again at three; off at four; and but that the two hotel dogs followed us and we turned back fearing to lose them, we were in a fair way for Rouen; as the roads join and we had chosen the wrong one. A beautiful sunrise and uninteresting country. Arrived at half-past eight this 17th of July at Breteuil, and its Hôtel de l’Ange, a fallen one!
Doubtful meat, sulky servants, dirty floors; windows commanding the view of a farrier’s premises, admitting the scent of the smoking hoofs, which since nine this morning have accommodated themselves to red-hot shoes; nothing to be seen but “a belvedere,” that is, a circular seat at the top of a mound, which having climbed, we may look at the road we have travelled. Starved with the semblance of a dinner, disgusted with the stairs which act as fowl-house, and some of whose steps the bonne, to prove her cleanliness, scraped with a dinner knife! Walked out, weary of the farrier, the two comrades who assist, and the boy who dusts the flies away, and were driven back by the still dirtier town.
CHAPTER II.
Clermont—Château now a Penitentiary—a Stronghold of the English in Charles the Sixth’s time—Creil, where Peter the Hermit preached the first Crusade—Charles the Sixth’s place of Confinement during his Madness—Chantilly—Écouen—Henry last Duke of Montmorency—Presentiment of his Father—at eighteen created Lord High Admiral—His early love in Languedoc—His prudential Marriage at the Louvre—His Successes at Rochelle—Coldness of Louis the Thirteenth, and jealousy of Richelieu—His gallantry at Veillane—Restoration of Prisoners—Humanity during the plague at Rivoli—His anxiety to become High Constable of France—Richelieu’s injustice—His retirement to Languedoc—Privileges of Languedoc—Prince Gaston’s efforts to win over Montmorency—The Duke’s arrest by Richelieu’s orders, rendered impossible through the people’s affection—Renewed efforts of Gaston—Persuasions of the Duchess—Montmorency’s reluctant consent—Gaston’s indecision and high words with the Duke—Battle of Castlenaudary—His emulation with the Comte de Moret to strike the first blow—The ditch leaped alone as at Veillane—The troops held back by Gaston in sight of his peril—Montmorency overpowered—Dragged from under his dead horse and carried before Schomberg—The female portrait on his arm discovered by a spy, and notice of his wearing it sent to incense the King by the Cardinal—The cries of the people beneath the Palace windows—His farewell to his wife, and legacy to Richelieu—The emotion of his Judges—His condemnation—Religious feeling of his last hours—His farewell to the statue of his Godfather—His calm death, and blood sought for as that of a martyr—His burial among the bones of the Sainted—The imprisonment of his widow—Her sad life—Her taking the veil—Louis the Thirteenth’s visit to her mourning cell and her reply to the Cardinal’s messengers—The King’s remorse—The apparition in the Hall of Écouen—St. Denis—Foundation of the Cathedral by Dagobert, St. Denis having appeared to him in a dream—Miraculous consecration of the church and the leper’s new skin—Tombs—The column to the memory of Francis, erected by Mary of Scotland—Breaking open of the monuments in 1793—Turenne in a glass case—a lock of Henry the Fourth’s beard making a soldier’s moustache—Plunder of a nose by an Englishman—The Caveau of the last Condé—Devotion of a Russian General to Henry the Fourth’s memory—The Cathedral preserved during the Revolution by being converted into a Market-house—Paris.
18th July.
One of the pleasures of travelling consists in leaving obnoxious places. Quitted Breteuil at four, in a fog cold as December; passing the Abbey, an old building with turrets and Gothic windows, and a grove whose alleys might have proved a resource, had we known they were so near yesterday. Long hills, but no view; till a short distance from Clermont, below the road to the right, we looked down on a wooded country, and the town, built on its bold hill, appeared before us; and we continued to skirt a pretty valley, passing chateaux and pleasure grounds, till, by a gentle ascent, we arrived at the Croissant, really a very good inn, and after Breteuil, a paradise. Fed a puppy, and Fanny showed symptoms of a jealous disposition. D—— arrived just in time to save his life, as she had taken him in her mouth, and was shaking him by the skin of his back. The heat kept us within doors till evening, when we climbed the remainder of the hill. Passed the place and the church to the chateau, which is now a penitentiary, containing 1500 women, and was in early days a fortress of the Franks, to protect them from Norman invasion; and in Charles the Sixth’s time a stronghold of the English. French guide-books still call it a Gothic castle, though I could see no trace of Gothic architecture remaining, except in the building on the place now the Hôtel de Ville, which has still the vestiges of battlements, and one old tower. The road leads, beneath an ancient arch, to the public promenade which surrounds the chateau which crowns it, like a verdant belt, its fine trees making, in French taste, stars and circles. The view it commands, as it juts over the valley, is very lovely; as the river shines below, and seems to lose itself winding among wooded hills, which succeed each other far to the right. The townspeople were assembled on the terrace, playing rackets with much noise and small skill; we sat on one of the stone benches watching the game, and the sun set—decidedly we prefer setting to rising suns; D——, in particular, has no taste for the beauties of nature at half-past four.
Left at five: passing on our way Creil on the Oise, looking from the bridge towards the west, you see built, in a rather elevated situation, the village of Montataire. It is said that here Peter the Hermit first preached the crusade. The ruined castle on the island of Creil was built in Charles the Fifth of France’s time, and a kind of balcony with iron gates, which belonged to Charles the Sixth’s apartment, was formerly shown. He was confined here during his madness, and the well built in the centre of the floor for heating the rooms with charcoal (for chimneys were not yet in use) remained also. I do not know whether they exist now.
It is a romantically situated town, and the view back to it, from the hill beyond, very interesting. Thence a straight road leads to Chantilly, and is wearisome enough, though a great part of it skirts the forest; but the trees here are young, and mostly oak, and yet without shade or beauty. A long descent conducts to the miserable town, and we stopped at the Hôtel de Bourbon Condé, the best and very bad, to breakfast and dine, intending to go on at sunset. I came here long ago to see the over ornamented park, and the stables for 240 horses; but to-day, instead of braving the burning sun, I lay down tired at last with early hours, and read a savage selection from discoveries in savage islands. John arrived, brought by the pity of the conductor, joined to the price of his place, of course. There being no room, he had constructed a pyramid of baggage on his back, preparatory to walking, when the conductor perched him in some unknown corner. He is growing troublesome; complaining yesterday of dining on bones, which on inquiry proved two fricasseed fowls! and anxious to know the punishment when a foreigner fights a Frenchman. We started after a dear dinner of bad meat, at the same time with the diligence, whose passengers we astonished, because, having taken the horses along a pathway and off the high road, our only way to return was over a ditch, which was narrow, but excited great shouting notwithstanding. The road through the forest pretty, but after quitting it, shorn of all its fine trees—got to Écouen very warm and thirsty—drank some beer in the street, and looked as we passed at the old chateau, 400 years the property of the Montmorency. Henry, marshal of Montmorency, was its last owner of the name. His history is so interesting, that I am tempted to write some of its circumstances here.
The war-cry of the Montmorency was “Dieu aide au premier baron Chrétien,” for the first baron was (tradition tells) baptized at the same time with Clovis, the first Christian king. The last, who was beheaded in 1632 and left no heir, was born in 1595. An astrologer drew his horoscope, and predicted that he would outshine his ancestors in glory, if he could avoid a danger which threatened his thirty-eighth year. He is described as being from his childhood mild, brave, and beautiful; possessing those graces of exterior which set off noble qualities. Henry the Fourth loved him as his own son; and taking pleasure in talking with the boy, he one day asked, “What is the virtue best fitted to a monarch?” “Clemency,” said the child; “since only kings have privilege to pardon.” He was thirteen when Henry bestowed on him the survivance of the governorship of Languedoc possessed by his father, who conducted him there, and himself installed him in his dignities; but when he had placed him in the seat the governor occupied in the parliament of Toulouse, a sudden presentiment of evil came over him, and he burst into tears. The king was sad without the boy, and soon recalled him to court, and proposed his marriage with his own daughter by Henriette d’Entragues. The constable of Montmorency had fixed his wishes on his son’s union with Mademoiselle de Beaufort, Henry’s daughter also, but by Gabrielle d’Estrées, and more beloved by him, as well as more beautiful; and the King, irritated by opposition, exiled him to Chantilly. He was there and in disgrace, when a marriage with the rich demoiselle de Chemilly was proposed to him for his heir. Thinking the King might disapprove, he desired his brother would conduct the youth to one of his own mansions, that he might there meet his destined bride; but Henry the Fourth, apprized of what was passing, sent an order to Duplessis, the commandant at Saumur, to arrest there, on their way, the Duke d’Amville and the young governor. Duplessis in consequence called upon them, and the Duke, suspecting his errand, invited him to dine. The officer refused, yet, wishing to do his duty civilly, put off the arrest till after dinner, merely placing a sentinel at the gates, intending to return in an hour or two. D’Amville and his nephew, instead of repairing to the eating-hall, walked straight to the stables, and riding out a private way, joined an escort of fifty gentlemen. When the King knew he had been outwitted, he sent the Duke of Soubise, with two companies of the guards, to the house where the marriage was to take place, with orders (if necessary) to force an entrance, and bring away Mademoiselle de Chemilly, but Soubise, on arriving, found them united. Some time after, the Constable, finding his daughter-in-law less rich than he expected, determined on dissolving this very marriage. The King gave his assent, and Montmorency was neither old enough nor sufficiently in love to resist him. Many thought that this violation of his vow brought on him the disasters of his after-life. Henry, rather than disoblige his favourite, broke a former engagement made for Mademoiselle de Beaufort, and her marriage with Montmorency was about to take place in 1610, when the King was murdered. The Duke was yet only fifteen. Three years after he was created Lord High Admiral, and the queen-mother proposed his union with the Princess Orsini, her relation, for Mademoiselle de Beaufort’s consequence had died with her father. The young Duke was disinclined to this marriage, for in his own Languedoc he had fallen in love with a lady so surpassingly lovely, that for her sake he was ready to forget ambition and make her his wife. She had been married to an old man, who, shortly after Montmorency first saw her, slipped as he feebly descended some steps, and died of the blow received on his head. The Duke, who witnessed this awful death, first consoled and then loved the widow: but overruled by his father, and perhaps influenced by all this high alliance promised him, he quitted Languedoc for Paris, accompanied by a hundred gentlemen and nobles of his province. He was lodged in the Louvre, and married there with all the ceremonial which accompanies the wedding of a prince; but either because his heart was far away with the fair lady of Montroux, or because something whispered that out of this ill-starred union would grow all his future misfortune, his joy was ill feigned. There was even an unwonted bitterness in his manner which brought on him a foolish quarrel; for, presenting to the Duke of Retz (who had espoused his deserted bride, Madlle. de Chemilly) a bowl of sweetmeats, which he had himself tasted, he said, “Take these, Sir; it is not the first time you have accepted what I have left;” they fought in consequence, but Montmorency disarmed him. The Duchess Mary of Orsini was gentle and of a fine figure, but by no means handsome. In spite of his infidelity, which she knew and deplored the more, seeing its object so beautiful, she was fondly attached to her husband and gained his esteem and affection by her uncomplaining gentleness. Once he remarked with sorrow, that she looked pale and changed. “It is true that my countenance is so,” she replied mildly, “it must suffice you that my heart is not.” His history would occupy too much space if told in detail. For many years almost constantly successful in the civil wars which desolated France; a faithful as well as brave subject; notwithstanding that the Cardinal Richelieu and the Duke of Luynes were his enemies, he refused to join the queen-mother against the King when they parted in anger. He was called the “King of Men” by his soldiers, who adored him. Sent to command the naval attack of La Rochelle, he was denied the needful supplies through the influence of Richelieu, and spent, to procure them, a part of his private fortune. He found the Dutch Admiral Houstain had lost a vessel, and wanted munition, and furnished him with both; yet when, having succeeded gloriously, he returned to court, he was coldly received by Louis the Thirteenth, and the jealous Cardinal soon after caused the suppression of the post of Lord High Admiral.
The religious wars ended, the King sent an army into Italy to support the Duke of Mantua against the Austrians. Richelieu had the command, and rather than not serve, Montmorency went as volunteer. The King bestowed on him, shortly after, the command of his army at Pignerol; then sent him to head the troops which entered Piedmont, where he obtained a signal victory. His army had received orders to join that of Marshal Laforce, but the Duke of Savoy lay between. The latter commenced the attack in an unexpected quarter, and the Marquis of Effiat and others advised rather to sacrifice the one regiment in peril than to risk the army. Montmorency exclaimed, “Who love me, follow!” and rushed forward at the head of the King’s gens-d’armes. Prince Doria was approaching; and the duke, to meet him with less delay, and well mounted, leaped a broad ditch which lay between them, and, though unfollowed, forced his way before a regiment of infantry, whose fire did not stop him, and through the ranks of a squadron commanded by Prince Doria, whom he wounded; and had arrived fighting and unharmed in the sixth rank of these horsemen before he was joined by any of those who had made a detour instead of leaping after him, and who, having believed him dead, found that he alone had half routed a squadron. By this and other exploits, continued throughout the day, the battle of Veillane was won; and the generous duke, who among his prisoners had taken almost all the officers of the Piedmontese army, sent them back to the Duchess of Savoy, who was King Louis’s sister. He had received no wound, but came from the field, the gold ornaments hacked from his splendid armour, and himself so bruised that he was hardly to be recognised. His horse, which was called “Le Remberge,” was wounded in twenty places, though slightly; and as it was a strong and beautiful animal, one of Montmorency’s officers wished for and received him from his general.
His troops were attacked at Rivoli by the plague, and to aid sick friends and soldiers he sold luxuries and comforts, and his head-quarters, far from being kept free from infection, rather resembled an hospital. Spite of his successes and the love of his army, or rather on account of them (for Richelieu envied his popularity, and already meditated his ruin), he was recalled. The soldiers mourned over him. “Who,” they said, “will lead us to victory when we lose Montmorency?” And yet, when the duke arrived at Lyons, and found there the King to all appearance dying, and Richelieu torn by anxiety, he took pity on the latter and frankly offered him protection in the province he commanded: relays were held in readiness to bear the Cardinal thither in case of the fatal termination of Louis’s malady; he vowed eternal gratitude, but forgot it as the King recovered. Montmorency had yielded his assent to the suppression of the States of Languedoc,—a loss of privilege which the province deplored, and he too repented. The King at his request promised their re-establishment, but avoided keeping his word; and the duke, whose ambition was to hold, like so many of his ancestors, the office of constable of France, being only created marshal, and otherwise coldly treated at court, retired to Languedoc. The Duke of Angoulême, his brother-in-law, said, when he bade him farewell, “that the king could never forget his services, and that his friends would always have sufficient influence to efface the false impressions made by the Cardinal;” but the duke shook his head sadly. “I do not flatter myself,” he said; “I shall not return to court, if affairs there continue as at present; my welfare is in the hands of God.”
Retired to the seat of his government, the duke’s heart was set on recovering the privileges of the province. By the King’s command the subject occupied the states-general assembled at Pézenas, but the King’s commissaries, Miron and Hemery, had the Cardinal’s private instructions to yield in nothing, for he hoped to wear out the patience of the governor by oppression of the province. He knew by his spies that the King’s brother Gaston intended striving to win over Montmorency; and as it was his maxim to treat as guilty those who possibly might become so, he dispatched an order to Hemery to arrest the duke. The latter just then making a journey to Montpellier, Hemery and the Marquis des Fossés followed, intending to make him prisoner there; but they judged the people’s love for him would render it impossible. Des Fossés altered his opinion when he found he was to attend the representation of a drama acted in his honour by the Jesuits’ pupils. He placed soldiers at the college gates to seize him, and issued an order to the garrison of the citadel, which joined it, to remain under arms. The duke, warned of what was passing, at first would not believe it possible, but the report spreading, persons of rank and condition flocked round him, offering to seize Hemery and Des Fossés, and to take possession of the citadel, which would have been easy, as it was feebly garrisoned, but the duke refused; a proof he did not then contemplate the treason to which Richelieu’s injustice was urging him. He went, contrary to advice, to the college, and returned, none having dared molest him, and two days after returned to Pézenas, where he told what had happened to the duchess, and his uncle, and other private counsellors there; they were loud in their cry for vengeance. The bishop of Alby, who was with Montmorency, had a nephew, partizan of Gaston and the queen-mother, with whom he corresponded. Just about this time a new commission arrived from court empowered to tax the province, and Alby and his nephew, who had come in disguise to treat with the governor, took advantage of it to influence him. They reminded him of reward denied and services forgotten; of the death of his cousin De Bouteville; the refusal to restore the privileges of Languedoc; the execution of the innocent Marshal of Marillac; yet all would have failed, had not the duchess joined to persuade, for she was niece of the queen-mother. A young girl who served her overheard a conversation between them. The duchess spoke low, in sentences broken by sobs; and the duke at last answered: “I will do so; you need persuade me no longer, your ambition shall be satisfied: but remember it will cost me my life.” Soud’heilles, the captain of his guard, was then in Paris; and the cardinal, alarmed when the duke had declared himself, dispatched him to Languedoc to try his influence with his master. Montmorency wavered, but the duchess and his confidants persuaded him, that to desert Gaston would be dishonour. He had a final conference with them, and returned from it straight to Soud’heilles. “My dear friend,” he said, “the stone is thrown, I cannot call it back again.”
The weak Gaston, then, as afterwards, incapable of opposing a foe as of protecting a friend long, was ill advised at this juncture, and arrived before the time agreed on with Montmorency, and before his measures could be taken. He had fifteen hundred half-armed men, the sympathy of the people, but neither Narbonne nor Montpellier. Lodeve received him, and from thence he sent a messenger to the duke.
“He has advisers who betray him,” he said, “and his over haste impairs his cause: but be it so, we must face the storm; and I feel it will fall on me.”
On the way to Beaucaire, which opposed Gaston, the duke passed Montpellier, and the people came out, weeping as they understood his danger. Beaucaire would have been taken; but when the army was before it, the Duke of Elbeuf claimed the chief command, which had been promised Montmorency; and Gaston being undecided, as usual, the delay of the attack gave time for the king’s troops to come up. He soon after, through the treason of some of his advisers, lost St. Felix de Carmain, and when the news of its surrender reached the prince, there came with it that of the advance of the royal troops to take Castelnaudary; near which lay his forces. The duke disposed his army in order of battle, near a brick bridge, which crossed the road, half a league from the town. “The time of your triumph is come,” he said to Gaston; “but this sword,” touching his own, “must be red to the hilt first.” The prince coldly answered, “Your rodomontades are never ending, Monsieur de Montmorency, but as yet, when you have promised me success, I have only been indebted to you for hope.” “I am not sorry to say to you now, that it will always be easy for me to make my peace with the King, and with two or three more to retire.” In consequence of this, high words ensued between the duke and Gaston, and they parted hardly reconciled.
It was a subject of emulation between the Comte de Moret and Montmorency to strike the first blow in the battle; and the latter, to make sure of himself doing so, asserted, as he advanced precipitately, that he went only to reconnoitre a post, and with some impatience commanded the noblemen who followed him to keep back! The Comte de Rieux, who rode close, reminded him, that it was his duty to be prudent, as on the general’s fate hung the army’s. Montmorency knew him for a brave man, yet he said what was far from his thoughts, “It would seem you are afraid;” and to shorten remonstrance as well as distance, he leaped his horse, as at Viellane, across a broad fence, and found himself at the other side with the Comte de la Feuillade, the Vicomte du Pujol Villeneuve, and a few more, in the midst of the enemy’s infantry. At the first fire, all with him fell, except Pujol, who fought by his side till a shot in the leg disabled him. His company of gens-d’armes came up, but the infantry, posted to advantage, kept up a fire which few escaped; yet the duke was unshaken; he opened a way wherever he turned, and might have retired with ease, and gloriously, to bring up the army; but being within their sight, he believed the troops would advance to support him; and a corps of cavalry, commanded by Baron de Laurières, coming up, he spurred so impetuously to meet him, that horse and man, as he encountered them, went down; and discharged on the head-piece of the leader’s son, Baron de Bourdet, so violent a blow, that the casque, examined after the battle, seemed indented by a battle-axe rather than a sword. His father rose from the ground at the moment, and seeing his son stagger, he wounded mortally the duke’s charger, and Montmorency fell with and under his dying horse. If Gaston had then brought up the army, this misfortune might have been repaired. The Duke of Elbeuf and Puy Laurens, and La Ferté Imbaut, (the two last suspected of having been bought over,) persuaded him to hold back, though his peril was visible from where they stood. A report next reached the prince, that his general had fallen, whereupon, flinging down his arms, and panic-struck, he exclaimed, “Sound the retreat, I will play this game no further.”
During this time Guiltaut and St. Preuil, captains of the royal guard, had come up with the duke, and mourned over him as he was drawn with difficulty from under his dead horse, covered with its gore and his own, for he was desperately wounded; and the blood which gushed from his mouth, as he lay with the weight pressing on him, had almost stifled him. “I sacrificed myself to ungrateful cowards,” he said, as soon as he could speak, “though it was told me, even before Beaucaire, that I was betrayed in the prince’s army.” Four soldiers raised him gently, and carried him to Marshal Schomberg, who received him with the esteem and tenderness which were his due. It is told that he wore on his arm, when taken prisoner, a portrait enriched with diamonds; this was perceived by his friend, De Bellièvre, who was afterwards President of the Parliament. Recognizing the female head, he pretended to question the duke, and taking his arm as he spoke to him, adroitly drew forth the miniature; but dexterously as it was done, it could not be hidden from a spy of the cardinal, present at the scene, and it was reported to Richelieu, who made use of it as a means to render Louis the Thirteenth implacable, as the picture was that of his queen, Anne of Austria!
The Count de Moret, natural son of Henry the Fourth, received his death-wound not thirty paces from his companion in arms. The latter, in consequence of the refinement on cruelty practised by the cardinal, and while all the people, loud as they dared, murmured shame, was borne in a litter to Toulouse, notwithstanding the insupportable heat and his uncured wounds. The inhabitants of Toulouse vowed to save him at any cost, but the cardinal received intimation of their resolves, and the prisoner was carried through without stopping to Leitoure. Arrived, he was conducted to the castle, and here a chance of escape presented itself again, for the Marchioness of Castelnaud bribed one of the guards, and provided him with ropes, by which the duke might be lowered to a place whence a passage led out into the country; and the marchioness, who was a determined woman, advanced with twenty horsemen as near to the citadel as they dared; but the guard was discovered with the ropes in his possession, by the lieutenant of the citadel, and killed by him on the spot, in the first burst of passion.
Notwithstanding the prayers of the army and the people, those of his brothers-in-law, the Prince of Condé and Duke of Angoulême, the agony of the duchess—the proceedings against Montmorency went on, and to a fatal termination. He expressed penitence for his conduct, and showed as much firmness as in his best days. He was persuaded by De Launay and his confessor to ask his pardon of the king: “Tell the cardinal,” he added to Launay, charged with the message, “that if he saves my life, he will have no reason to repent of it: but also that I do not ask the king’s council to act against conviction, if they believe my death more useful to the state than might be the rest of the years I have to live.”
Anne of Austria, the queen consort, solicited by the Duke of Épernon and the principal nobility of the court, to intercede with the king, feared the cardinal’s misinterpretation, and applied to him in the first instance. He answered that he did not doubt the king’s granting any favour she desired, but that she herself should also consider, that the annoyance she was about to cause him would injure his health, which, since his malady at Lyons, he had never recovered; and Anne, seeing by the cardinal’s manner, that, by saving the captive she risked his anger, determined rather to let him die. The people assembled under the king’s windows, and their cry reached his ears: he asked its import, it was “Mercy for Montmorency!” The king merely permitted him to dispose of his property, notwithstanding the confiscation about to be pronounced, and the duke occupied himself with the payment of his debts and the care of his vassals. He wrote an affectionate farewell to his unhappy wife, who was not in a state to read it, and sent to Richelieu, who had once wished to possess it, a fine picture of St. Sebastian, as his dying gift.
The last night of his existence he slept during six hours, tranquilly, as if the coming events of the next day were unknown to him, and prayed fervently when he woke. The hour arrived for his being conducted to the palace, he received the Count of Charlus, who came to seek him, cheerfully as ever, but refused to allow his surgeon to dress his wounds, saying they would soon be cured. He asked for something to eat, and then got into the carriage, which was open. The Counts of Charlus and Launay followed, and four companies of soldiers escorted him; the rest of the army lined the streets he passed through, or filled the squares of the town. As he stood with mild demeanour and bareheaded before his judges, his noble presence was that of the governor, not the criminal. The judges seeing him they loved, and were perforce about to doom, looked down to hide the tears which rose in spite of them, or buried their faces in their handkerchiefs. He was desired to sit on the criminal’s stool, which however, contrary to custom, had been raised to the level of the judges’ seats, and, contrary to custom also, he was left unbound. He was painfully affected while replying to the question, “Whether he had children by his marriage,” for he mourned the want of an heir.
The trial over, he was conducted from the Palace of Justice back to the Hôtel de Ville, where he recommenced his devotions, and these ended, conversed with his friends and wrote some private instructions for his family; and the Count de Charlus, his face covered with tears, asking in the king’s name for his order of the Holy Ghost and bâton of marshal, he delivered them calmly, saying, “it was true that one crime had cancelled the services which obtained them;” and then took some slight refreshment. He next repaired to the chapel. The commissaries of the court arrived to read his sentence to him, he listened with perfect tranquillity, kneeling before the altar, and rising when they concluded, and sobbed with their emotion, he spoke to them with great kindness. He was informed that the royal favour (though indeed it was the cardinal’s fear) allowed his being executed within the courts of the Hôtel de Ville instead of on the public square. De Launay was at this time with the king, who had sent for him, and the duke’s friends felt hope revive; but Louis merely desired “that he should die unbound,” and this he declined, saying, “he would end life as he deserved, like a criminal.” He cut off his own hair, and changed his rich attire for the poor clothes of a soldier; he had bowed, as he came along, to the troops who guarded him, and bade them farewell. There was some delay, (perhaps in consequence of changing the place of execution,) and during this time the duke remained seated on a bench adjoining the chapel balustrade, and conversed with his confessor, too low for others to overhear. He asked for water to wash his mouth, for he suffered from sore throat: “Father,” he said, “can you explain to me my feelings? Before heaven I assure you that I go to death with satisfaction, without regret or dread; and if I had never believed in God until now, this firmness vouchsafed to my weak nature would make me adore him.” Efforts, even in this last hour, were made to save him, but in vain, though the Pope’s nuncio was one who pleaded. He calmly presented his arms to be bound by the executioner, and desired Father Arnoux to take from his hand the crucifix, since “the just might not be bound with the guilty.” He was led into the court where was the scaffold, and his surgeon cut his hair which he had left too long, and fainted when he had done; even the executioner wept. The marble statue of Henry the Fourth stood above one of the entrances, and he gazed at it earnestly. The confessor noticing it, he said, “Father, he was a good and generous prince.” Continuing to advance, he ascended the steps of the scaffold as firmly as if they had led to glory. He spoke to a jesuit who stood beneath: “I pray you,” he said, “prevent, if you may, my head from falling to the earth; receive it, if possible.” He kneeled and prayed once more, and adjusted himself on the block, which gave him great pain, as it was too low; a single stroke severed his head from his body. The gates were thrown open; people and troops thronged in with cries of grief, crowding round and on the scaffold, reverently dipping kerchiefs in his blood, which they held to be that of a martyr. That day, a soldier drew on the executioner to kill the wretch by whose vile hand the best and bravest of men had died. The people withheld and concealed him, for the cardinal caused search to be made that he might be put to death. His hatred was not quenched in Montmorency’s blood, for he persecuted his friends and relatives.
After the execution, the duke’s body was folded in a black silk velvet pall, and conveyed in a carriage to the abbey of St. Sernin, where it was buried in a chapel in which only the bones of saints had been laid, and the counts of Toulouse had been refused a sepulchre. Masses for the repose of his soul were said in every part of France, as well as by the command of the empress at Vienna, and the arch-duchess in the Low Countries. The king imprisoned the unhappy widow in the castle of Moulins, where she remained eight months reproaching herself with her husband’s untimely death; but feeling that time elapsed, that there could be no reason for doubting her, and ashamed of his rigour, he desired her to choose her place of residence, either within or without his kingdom; she staid at Moulins. Having purchased a house adjoining the convent of La Visitation, she there lived an exemplary life during ten years, her only consolation a portrait of the duke, gazing on which she spent whole days. Before her marriage she had wished to become a nun, and the desire now reviving, in her mistaken fervour, she believed it a duty to part with this which she looked on as a last tie to the world, and ere she entered the convent she wept over it once more and then parted from it.
Some time after, the king passing through Moulins, did her the honour of a visit, and the next day the cardinal sent to offer her his compliments. In her cell hung with black, the shadow of what she had been, the duchess received his officer: “Tell your master,” she said, “that I thank him, but that my tears are still undried!” After his general’s death, the king’s remorse was awakened; and he confessed that he repented of many things which had been done during his inauspicious journey to Languedoc. He once arrived late at Écouen, intending to pass the night there. It was evening, and the monarch passed slowly along one of the vast halls on his way to the apartment prepared for him. His suite followed at a little distance, but rushed to his side when he uttered a faint cry, and stretched his arm forth in the gloom as if to put back some one advancing on him.
“What ails you, sire,” they exclaimed as he stood still, and in an attitude of defence against what appeared to them empty space. “He was there! I saw Montmorency there,” said the king; “I cannot sleep in this castle;” and turning precipitately, Louis the Thirteenth left the hall. Écouen now again, as during the empire, belongs to the Legion of Honour. As we rode down the hill, the fine view of Paris once more stretched below us in the sunshine. I had not seen it for some years, and looked at it now with a strange sensation, pleasant and painful, for it seemed like home, because so much of early association is connected with it, and I felt it was not home, because death and marriage, time and revolution have so severed and scattered all the links which held me here, that I shall scarcely find a trace of where they were once riveted.
From Écouen to St. Denis the way seemed wearisome, for we had ridden fifteen leagues since morning, yet Fanny went prancing into the inn yard gay as at starting. A disagreeable hotel from its unconquerable bad air. To-day, 19th July, D—— is gone to Paris in search of apartments; and I, followed by John, have passed an hour in the cathedral. The Suisse, I believe, thought his countenance suspicious, for he was unwilling to lead the way. Near the principal entrance, on the left hand, is a strange monument, erected by St. Louis to Dagobert. This church (my authority is the Benedictine who wrote its history) was founded under singular circumstances. When Clotaire the Second was king its place was occupied by a small chapel, which had already miraculous properties, being built over St. Denis’s tomb. A stag, hard pressed, had one day taken refuge within, and the hounds were unable to follow. Prince Dagobert witnessed this fact. He soon after incurred his father’s anger by barbarously ill-treating his governor, and he repaired to the sanctuary. The royal guards sent to seize him were invisibly withheld, and the prince fell asleep while they rushed to and fro, vainly attempting to come nearer. St. Denis appeared to him in a dream, and desired that he would erect a building in his honour. Become king he obeyed the saint’s mandate; and when the day for the consecration of the church came (the 24th February, 636), and a great crowd assembled to witness it, the people were all forced to retire, excepting one poor leper, who hid himself in a corner of the chapel. Night closed in, and of a sudden he beheld a great light shining through one of the windows, filling the whole church; and continuing to fix his eyes on the same window, he saw the Saviour enter at it, followed by St. Peter and St. Paul, St. Rustique and St. Éleuthère, and also by a great multitude of saints and angels. He consecrated the church, walked round it, heading the procession, scattered holy water on the pavement, poured celestial oil on the walls, and at last perceived the leper: he commanded him to tell faithfully what he had seen to king and prelate. “Alas!” said the leper, “I cannot approach them for my rags and my leprosy.”
He had no sooner said this, than he felt the skin of his face gently lifted, and being cast against the wall it stuck there, and that which remained in its place was pure as a child’s; and looking at his clothes he saw he was richly habited: this miracle performed, he watched the Saviour and the celestial procession issue forth by the same window, and went and told the king.[[1]]
More interesting than Dagobert’s tomb, or those of Louis the Twelfth, and Anne of Brittany, and Henry the Second, and Catherine de Médicis, with her countenance telling of a life of intrigue, public massacre and private murder, is the slight marble column, at whose foot are three weeping angels,—for it was raised by Mary of Scotland to the memory of her young husband, who died when she had been a wife and queen of France but one short year. The monument of Francis the First is in the opposite aisle; the figures of himself and his wife Anne, kneeling on the top of the stone canopy, under which they are again represented dead. The alto relievo of the battle of Marignan, which surrounds the tomb, is very beautiful. On each side of the choir steps lead down to the crypt, and the Suisse unlocked the iron gate, though still I saw against his will, and we walked through the avenue of royal tombstones, wherein kings and queens do not sleep now; since a municipal decree, proceeding from St. Denis itself, in conformity with the decree of the Convention, ordered on the 12th of October, 1793, the breaking open of the monuments for the sake of the lead they might contain, and the scattering of bones, some of which had lain there near 1500 years. Curiosity induced the workmen to commence by the grave of Turenne. He was found in an extraordinary state of preservation, perfectly resembling the portraits and medals which we possess of him, only that the skin had darkened. The distortion of feature, caused by his violent death (by a cannon ball), remained, as the mouth was very wide open. He was, at the suggestion of some present, confided to one “Host,” keeper of the cathedral, and by him placed in an oaken case with a glass cover, and for eight months exhibited in the vestry. The vault of the Bourbons and the tomb of Henry the Fourth were next opened, and the body found so perfect, that the features had undergone no change. He also was exhibited during the two following days, and then borne to the churchyard, called De Valois, where he was buried in a grave dug at its extremity, on the right hand and north side. A soldier present at the time rushed towards the corpse, and with his sabre cut from it a lock of the long beard, exclaiming, that “He too was a Frenchman,” and henceforth would wear no other mustachio; and holding the lock on his upper lip, and saying he was sure of conquering any enemy of France, went away.
The remainder of the bodies, some in a state of putrefaction, which during this unnatural work produced malignant fever, others, reduced to skeletons or ashes, were dragged from their coffins, and flung by torchlight into one wide grave. The Suisse pointed out the side door near Mary Stuart’s funeral column, as that through which they were carried. The monuments in the crypt are ranged in chronological order: among the most ancient, those of the royal fury Frédégonde and her daughter-in-law Brunehaude, who died torn by wild horses. The vaults are but half under ground, and a dreary daylight enters, falling on the figures stretched on the tombs, for those only of the earliest period are mere outlines. The rest are dressed in the costume of their time, with hands crossed and raised, and the dog or lion couched at the feet. “Here,” said the Suisse, stopping before one of the Capetian race, and pointing to the very prominent nose which had been broken from his face and lay there yet uncemented, “is the token of the last English visit. A gentleman came, conversed with me, walked by my side, and when he thought me not attending to his movements, wrenched off this nose. I seized it in his hand in his coat pocket; he said he had broken it by mistake, and pocketed it in absence of mind. “Mon pauvre nez, que je n’ai pas encore restitué,” said the Suisse in indignation. I understood at last why he had an objection to showing the church, and tranquillized him by making John walk on before. Here were laid Clovis, the first Christian king, and his wife, Bertha, who converted him; King John after his ill-fortune at Poitiers; his excursion on his white horse through the streets of London, beside his conqueror, on his pony; his visit to his own kingdom, and voluntary return to captivity to die.
We wished to enter the vault where the Bourbons are interred, but this the Suisse said was impossible, as he had not the keys, and even Mons. Thiers had been denied admittance some days before. The last buried was Louis the Eighteenth, whose chapelle ardente I saw here when I was a child, and with its splendid sarcophagus, purple velvet hangings, and thousand lights, and the silent crowd pressing to see, was a scene of melancholy brilliancy. The “chapelle ardente” occupied the whole of the nave, inclosed by the hangings, and terminated by a burning cross.
The “caveau,” which holds the last Condé, is totally dark, excepting where the lamp, which burns so feebly in its bad air, just shows the damp-decaying pall hanging in ribands. The lapse of centuries robs in some measure of its sadness the long range of monuments we passed before; but it is not so as we look through the iron gate at these dimly-seen coffins.
We think of the ditch of Vincennes and the bed-room of St. Leu!
It was in the now-closed vault of the Bourbons that Henry the Fourth lay. One anecdote more I must tell you, as it proves the respect entertained for his memory. It is told by Le Noir, the antiquarian:—
“The day following that of the allied armies’ entrance into Paris, a Russian general, accompanied by a detachment of cavalry, presented himself at eight in the morning at the museum of the Petits Augustins. He said he had heard in Russia of the collection I had formed, and as a lover of the arts it was the first place he desired to visit in Paris. I opened the gates to him, and he and his soldiers dismounted. Arrived in the hall of the sixteenth century, a statue in white marble absorbed his attention. I said to him, ‘It is the statue of Henry the Fourth.’ He repeated my words in Russian to his companions, and all, uncovering their heads, kneeled on one knee to do homage to the dead king of France.”
In January, 1815, the remains of Louis the Sixteenth and Marie Antoinette were transferred to the vault of the Bourbons. In 1817, all the noble or royal remains cast forth from the violated tombs were once more deposited within them in presence of the chancellor, the necessary authorities and witnesses, a company of the gardes du corps and the clergy of St. Denis. Immense crowds flocked thither, by a bright moonlight which shone on the old towers, making the numberless torches which flashed on the walls almost useless; the broken and mingled bones were returned to their first place of repose, after a twenty-four years’ exile.
The Cathedral of St. Denis will shortly be in complete repair, though it was ravaged in the revolution, and roofless during twelve years; though it was several times offered for sale without finding a purchaser; and its destruction had been commanded, when Petit Radel, architecte des domaines, proposed, with a view to preserve it, that it should be left as it stood then, with uncovered walls, and rain, or snow, falling in its aisles, and serve as a kind of market-house in the fairs which occur frequently during the year!
Paris, and in our old apartment, 20th of July.
Unforeseen circumstances have postponed till next spring our ride to Italy, when I will continue these notes for you, and we shall go as heretofore, except that John will no longer be of the party; his disposition has become so warlike that we intend sending him back to Ireland.
| [1] | History of the Abbey of St. Denis, by Doublet. |
CHAPTER III.
Departure under an unlucky star—Essonne—Petit Bourg—The Czar Peter—Fontainebleau—Palace—Apartments of the Emperor Charles the Fifth—Chamber where Pius the Seventh said mass daily—Chapel founded in the seventh century—Cypher of the Saviour and Virgin placed beside those of Henry the Second and Diana of Poitiers—Princess Mary of Orleans—Napoleon’s apartments—Marie Antoinette’s boudoir—Carving by Louis the Sixteenth’s hand—Monaldeschi, favourite of Queen Christina—Gallery where he was murdered—Account of his murder by the Monk who confessed him, of his burial at dusk in the church of Avon—Window thrown open by Henry the Fourth, to announce Louis the Thirteenth’s birth—Gallery of Henry the Second, called Galerie des Réformés—Petition in which they took the name presented here by Coligny—Open chamber above the Donjon—Arch where Louis the Thirteenth was publicly baptized—Biron’s tower—His treason—His denial—His last interview with Henry the Fourth—Napoleon—The forest—The Comte de Moret, last inhabitant of the Hermitage of Franchard—Fanny’s sagacity—Croix du Grand Veneur-The spectre hunt—Apparition and warning to Henry the Fourth, corroborated by Sully—Avon—Monaldeschi, Christina’s fickle lover—The old church—The fat porter—The grave beneath the Bénitier—The Englishmen’s sacrilege—Monaldeschi their relative—Precautions against travellers.
Hôtel de France, Fontainebleau,
April 5th, 1839.
Set forth once more on the second, under an unlucky star, for the rain commenced as we passed the barrier, and having received it on our heads during a walk of four hours, (for over the broken pavement, or through the three-foot-thick mud at its sides it was impossible to trot,) we were glad to take refuge in a wretched auberge at Essonne. I think I mentioned to you “a country inn” in England where we stopped, tempted by its quiet appearance, and charmed by the brilliantly white curtains of the tiny bed-room: but alas! the farmers were returning from Tewkesbury fair, and they drank and sang in the kitchen below. We rejoiced that this could not pass a certain hour, but they had smoked, and the fumes of tobacco rose to our room through the chinks of the floor, and there being no chimney could not get out again; then the family put the house to rights; then we heard the horses kick all night, there being in the shed next theirs pigs, with whom they would not fraternize; and the rats galloped to and fro, and squeaked at our very pillows, and when these were quiet, at dawn up rose mine host and hostess, and the maid of all work to scour the house from top to bottom, and run about it in pattens. All this is comfort, compared to a country auberge in France. Arriving wet and weary, to stand in the middle of a great brick-floored room, in which there has been no fire all the winter, in expectation of seeing damp faggots burn; and finding when they do that the door into the corridor must be left wide open, that the draught may conduct towards the chimney the smoke, and the steam of wet clothes and damp sheets which must be dried there, as the economical kitchen hearth exhibits only a few dying embers,—this was our case. The good old woman to be sure offered a remedy, as she said that we might, if we liked, take a dry pair of sheets, which had been slept in only once, and recommended hanging the dripping habit and cloaks in the grenier, whose unglazed windows let in full as much rain as wind. Add to my previous enumeration a dinner of dry bouilli, and greasy cabbage, a faggot for our feet serving as a rug, and dirty alcove with plenty of cobwebs but no curtains.
I believe the descent of the road into Essonne commands a pretty view, but the rain blinded me. We passed on the right hand the château du Petit Bourg, once the Duke d’Antin’s, now the property of the parvenu Spanish banker, whose collection of pictures is the finest in Paris, and who once, history says, kept a wine-shop on the boulevard. It was here the Czar Peter dined on his way to Fontainebleau, May 30th, 1700, where the Duke de Villeroy received him; and after a stag-hunt in the forest and a carouse in the Pavilion de l’Étang, it was necessary to carry himself and his suite into the boats, and thence into the carriages, which bore inebriated majesty back to Petit Bourg.
Awaking the 3d with a cold on my chest, and determined at least on being ill in better quarters, set out, rain having subsided to fog: a bad and weary road, till, two leagues from Fontainebleau, we entered the forest, and it looks really royal with its magnificent trees and hills of rock: green (though spring is so backward) with the luxuriant holly, which flourishes everywhere, and the different coloured bright mosses which clothe its old trunks, and masses of strange shaped stone. Stopped at the Hôtel de France, on the Place du Château opposite the palace; a fine, frowning, old building, looking as if sorrow and crime might have lodged within its walls without tales told. This inn has every possible comfort to recommend it, and is reasonable besides. Some of our country-people, who formerly spoiled the road by extravagance, now drive rather hard bargains. What do you think of a post-carriage containing six, having just now stopped, wanting beds, tea, and eggs for their party for six francs?
April 5th.
Went yesterday to see the Château, and returned there to-day. The surveillant of yesterday gruffly turned us back, as the Infant of Spain was expected, but admitted us in consideration of the fee. Our guide to-day showed the Château much more fully, and could be prevailed on by no entreaty to accept payment. They are strictly enjoined to take nothing. The grand staircase, whose entrance is in the Cour du Cheval Blanc, was built in Louis the Thirteenth’s time. The apartments on the right, now those of the Duke and Duchess of Orleans, and splendidly furnished on their marriage, are the same in which the Emperor Charles the Fifth was lodged when he visited Francis the First in 1539; afterwards those of Catherine de Médicis, and, when she and her bloody line had passed away, of Anne of Austria; and next of Maria Theresa, wife of Louis the Fourteenth. The portraits of the two last are placed above the entrance doors of the chamber next the saloon, which still bears the name of Chambre des Reines-Mères. Here in this very room was mass daily said by Pius the Seventh, during his forced stay in 1812, in the same apartments which had been decorated for his arrival when he came to crown Napoleon in 1804.
The most ancient as well as the most interesting part, of the Château is the Gothic chapel of St. Saturnin. Built by Louis the Seventh in the twelfth century, and consecrated by Thomas à Becket, archbishop of Canterbury, to whose tomb, considering him a saint and martyr, Louis the Seventh afterwards made a pilgrimage, it was restored by Francis the First, and embellished by Henry the Second. The cyphers puzzled me; and they are indeed strangely mingled, for those of the Saviour and the Virgin, I and M, are placed alternately with the H, D, those of King Henry the Second, and his mistress Diana!
The chapel is small and low, a most impressive place: the heavy masonry looking likely to stand till the crumbling of the world shakes it down, and dimly lighted by three narrow windows, whose coloured glass was painted at Sèvres, from drawings by poor Princess Mary. The young artist beatified the members of her family before their time. St. Philip is an excellent likeness of the king, made saint-like by a long beard. The superb confessional, in carved oak, looks coeval with the walls, but it is the recent work of a clever Parisian artisan.
The apartments now Louis Philip’s were once Napoleon’s. The Cabinet de Travail precedes the Emperor’s bed-room, and contains the small plain table on which he signed his abdication, and the fac simile of its rough copy in his own hand, so scrawled and blotted, I could not read a word. The bed-room is still furnished as it was in his time, saving the golden eagles, which were removed on the restoration, and are about to be replaced now. The king occupies, not this chamber, but the next in order, which was the unfortunate Marie Antoinette’s boudoir. The Salle du Trone which follows is also in the same state as during the empire, except that the portrait of Louis the Thirteenth, which hung here when this was his bed-chamber, replaces that of Napoleon.
The charming little room next it, which was the Queen’s boudoir, would interest you, not so much for its lovely decorations, as because it was constructed for Marie Antoinette by Louis the Sixteenth’s order; and the beautiful espagnolettes of the windows (up which the delicately carved gold acanthus leaves twine on a blue ground) were the work of the king’s own hand. This suite of apartments looks on the Cour de l’Orangerie, of which the Galerie de Diane, and the apartments directly beneath it, which were once the Galerie des Cerfs, form another side. I was most anxious to see the latter, which is interesting as the scene of Monaldeschi’s murder, the favourite of the crowned barbarian Christina of Sweden. It is not shown now; it was falling into decay in the Emperor’s time, the guide said, and by him replaced by apartments for the King of Rome. From the window at which we were standing, he pointed to the one near which Monaldeschi was assassinated. An inscription marks it, the third from where the gallery joins the main building.
Christina abdicated the 16th of June, 1654. She crossed France in her way to Italy. As she was about to proceed to Paris, a command of Louis the Fourteenth stopped her at Fontainebleau, where she arrived the 3d of October, 1657. The following extract is from the account given by Lebel, the head of the Mathurin monastery.
“The 8th of November, 1657, at a quarter past nine in the morning, the Queen of Sweden, who was lodged in the conciergerie of the château, sent a running footman to fetch me. He said, ‘If you are the superior of the monastery, I have her majesty’s order to bring you where you may have speech together.’ I replied, I was so, and would accompany him to learn her will; and without taking any one along with me, fearing to make her wait, I followed the valet to the antechamber. I was detained there some minutes, but the valet having at last returned, I was conducted to the Queen’s chamber. I found her alone, and having offered her my humble respects, I asked what she required of her servant. She desired me to follow her to the Galerie des Cerfs, where we might speak undisturbed; and being entered there, she asked whether we had ever met before. I replied, I had merely had the honour of saluting her, and offering my best services, for which her goodness thanked me. Whereupon she said, that the robe I wore induced her to confide in me, and desired that I would promise to keep her secret as one under the seal of confession. I answered, that whenever I was intrusted with aught, I became naturally dumb on that subject; and being discreet with regard to the humble, I had of course stronger reason for discretion now; and I added, Scripture saith, ‘it is good to keep the king’s secret.’ Having asked me this question, she placed in my hands a packet of papers, without superscription, but sealed with three seals, bidding me to return it to her in such time and presence as should be commanded me by her majesty. She desired also that I would take note of the day, hour, and place in which she gave it to my care, and without further conversation I retired with the packet, leaving the Queen in the gallery. On Saturday, the 10th day of the same month, at one in the afternoon, the Queen of Sweden again sent a valet to fetch me; whereupon I went to a cabinet and took thence the packet, thinking she might demand it of me. I followed the footman, who conducted me through the gate of the donjon, and into the Galerie des Cerfs, and as soon as I was within, closed the door on me with a vivacity which surprised me. Perceiving about the centre of the gallery the Queen, talking to one of her suite, whom she called Marquis, (I afterwards knew it was Monaldeschi,) I approached her, and she asked in a rather loud tone of voice, in hearing of the marquis and of three men who stood near, for ‘the papers.’ Two of these men were some steps from her, and the third by her side. I drew near and presented the packet. Her majesty took and examined it for a time, and then opening the enclosure, gave the letters it contained to the marquis, saying with a grave voice and commanding manner, ‘Are not these known to you?’ He denied that they were, but turned very pale. ‘You will not avow these,’ rejoined the Queen, (they were in truth only copies made by her own hand;) and having allowed him to examine them, she next drew from under her robe the originals, and, showing them, called him traitor, and made him acknowledge his writing and signature. She asked him the same question several times, and the marquis strove to excuse himself, and cast the blame on others. At last he threw himself on his knees, craving her forgiveness; and the three men present at the same moment drew their swords from the scabbard. He started up again, imploring her to hear him, and drew her as he spoke earnestly from one corner to another of the gallery. Her majesty did not refuse, but listened very patiently, never showing anger or weariness. When he pressed her most to receive his excuses, she turned to me, and said, ‘Bear witness, father, that I hasten nothing against this man, but that I give to a perfidious traitor all the time that he requires; yea, even more, to justify himself if possible;’ and approaching the marquis again she leaned on the rounded head of her ebony cane.
“The Marquis of Monaldeschi, hard pressed by the Queen, gave her other papers, and with them two or three small keys, which he took from a pocket, whence at the same time fell several pieces of silver. Their conference lasted rather more than an hour, and his replies not having satisfied her, she again walked up to me, saying in a voice still rather loud, but grave and calm, ‘Father, I retire, and leave you this man; have a care of his soul, and prepare him to die.’ If her sentence had been pronounced against myself, I should scarcely have felt more terror. I and the marquis both kneeled down to implore her pardon; she said, ‘He was more criminal than many condemned to the wheel, and she could not grant it;’ that, thinking him a faithful subject, she had communicated to him her most important affairs and secret thoughts; that she would not remind him of the benefits she had conferred on him, as his conscience might serve for tormentor, for she had favoured him more than a brother.’ The Queen then retired, and the marquis, left with me and the three with their drawn swords, continued on his knees, praying me to follow her majesty, and strive to soften her. The men desired him to confess, pointing their swords at his throat, but forbearing to touch him, and I with tears in my eyes besought him to ask pardon of God.
“He who seemed the chief of the three men, himself taking pity on him, did indeed seek the Queen, but returned sorrowful, and said, weeping, ‘Marquis, think only of God, for you must indeed die.’ The marquis, who at the words seemed half frantic, prostrated himself on the ground once more, and desired that I would myself seek her, and try the effect of my prayers. I did so, and found her alone in her chamber, her countenance serene, and her manner betraying no emotion. I sunk down before her, conjuring her majesty by the sorrows of Christ to have mercy. She said, ‘She regretted the necessity she was under to refuse me, for, from his perfidy to her, he could expect neither respite nor pardon.’
“Finding that entreaties availed nothing, I took the liberty of representing that she was beneath the roof of the King of France, and bade her beware of what she did, as he might disapprove. She called heaven to witness that she bore no personal hatred to the marquis, but that she chose to punish an unparalleled treason; that she was not lodged by the king as one who took refuge, neither was she a captive; and as she obeyed nought save her own will, she chose to administer justice to her servants at all times and in all places.
“In this extremity I knew not what to resolve on. I could not quit the château; and even had it been in my power, I felt bound by charity and my conscience to dispose the marquis to die. I returned then to the gallery, and embracing the unhappy man, who was drowned in tears, I exhorted him to turn all his thoughts to God and his conscience, as there was no hope for him on earth.
“At this news, having uttered two or three melancholy cries, he kneeled down before me as I sat on one of the benches, and commenced his confession, which having nearly concluded, he rose and cried aloud twice. He then ended his confession, mingling French, Latin, and Italian in his fear and confusion. The Queen’s almoner at that moment entered, and the marquis, without waiting to receive absolution, went to him, conceiving hopes from his favour with her majesty. They whispered apart, holding one another by the hand for some time, and then the almoner went out, taking with him the chief of the three. The latter returned alone, and said, ‘Marquis, you must die without more delay: have you confessed?’ Saying this, he pressed him against the wall at that end of the gallery where hangs the picture of St. Germain en Laye, and I could not so suddenly turn aside as to avoid seeing him struck in the chest on the right side, and that he, trying to ward off the blow, caught the blade in his right hand, from which, as the other drew it back, it cut off three fingers.
“He then exclaimed that he wore a shirt of mail, as in truth he did, one which weighed nine or ten pounds, and the same man repeated the blow, aiming it at his face, and the marquis cried out, ‘Father, father!’ I went to him, and the other retreated a little, and he confessed somewhat more, and I gave him absolution, imposing on him for penitence that he should suffer a violent death. He threw himself on the floor, and as he fell, one of the men gave him a blow on the head, which carried away part of the skull; and, being stretched on his face, he made signs that they should cut his throat; and they wounded him there several times, but not mortally, because the shirt of mail rose high under the collar of his doublet, and deadened the blows. All this time I exhorted him to think of heaven, and bear all patiently. The chief of the three then asked me whether he should finish him, and I answered angrily, and said, I had no advice to give, as I had prayed not for his death, but his life; and then he begged my pardon, and said he was wrong to ask me such a question.
“The poor marquis, who lay expecting the last stroke, now heard the door of the gallery open, and recalled his courage, seeing the almoner enter, and dragged himself towards him, supporting himself against the wainscoting. I was on his right hand, and the almoner passed to his left, and the marquis, joining his hands, said something, as if he was confessing; and the almoner, having first asked my leave, gave him absolution and retired, desiring me to remain while he went to the Queen. At this moment, the same who had wounded him in the throat before, and who had stood by the almoner’s side, pierced it through with a long narrow sword, whereupon the marquis fell on his right side, and did not speak again, but continued to breathe yet a quarter of an hour, during which time I exhorted him as well as I was able. Having lost all his blood, he expired at three quarters past three. I recited the De Profundis, and the chief of the three men moved a leg and then an arm, to see if he were really dead, and searched his pockets, but found nothing, excepting a small knife and a prayer book: we then all three departed to receive the Queen’s orders. She said she regretted having been forced to command his execution; but that she had done justice, and prayed heaven to pardon him. She desired me to see that his corpse was carried away and buried, and that masses were said for the repose of his soul. I had a coffin made, and because of the darkness, the bad road, and the weight, it was placed in a cart, and I sent with it my chaplain and vicar to the church of Avon, with three men to assist, and orders to bury the body within the church near the ‘bénitier,’ and this was done at three quarters past five that same evening.
Lebel.”
The church, or rather chapel of the Holy Trinity, was founded by Francis the First, but ornamented in Henry the Fourth’s reign. The niches near the altar contain the statues in white marble of Charlemagne, and Louis the Ninth, the sainted king. Louis the Fifteenth’s marriage with the daughter of the unfortunate Stanislas, king of Poland, was celebrated here, and latterly that of the Duke of Orleans with the Princess Helen.
It is to be repaired without delay, not before reparation is needful, as the deep cracks through the ceilings and faded frescoes testify. The Galerie de François Premier was built and decorated in his time and yet unrestored; the pale salamanders are barely visible on the walls. The queen’s antechamber was the imperial dining-room in Napoleon’s time, and the Salon de Reception the apartment in which Louis the Thirteenth was born. King Henry threw open one of those windows to announce the news to his courtiers, who were walking in the oval court below. The chamber of St. Louis formed part of a pavilion built during his reign, but bears no trace of ancient architecture; over its chimney is a fine Henry the Fourth on horseback, in white marble; it belonged to a chimney piece, which gave its name to the hall, changed in Louis the Fifteenth’s time to a shabby theatre, for it was called Salle de la belle Cheminée. The statues of Strength and Peace were the chivalrous king’s fitting supporters. The whole was thrown aside in the stores of the Château, and left there dusty and forgotten, till Louis Philip’s command replaced the equestrian statue in St. Louis’s chamber, and the other two in the Salle des Gardes adjoining.
A corridor conducts to the gallery of Henry the Second. It was built by Francis the First, and decorated by his son; and now its ancient glory revived with scrupulous fidelity, the deep ornamented recesses in which the five tall windows on each side are sunk, the gorgeous ceiling, the walls covered with gold, and frescoes by Primatice or Nicolo, are, even to the silver crescent and the cypher, reappearing at every step, the same as when Diana of Poitiers and her royal lover trod its floor. The only loss it has sustained is that of the two bronze satyrs eight feet high which supported the chimney-piece: they were seized for ammunition in 1793, and Napoleon replaced them by two pillars now standing. The chimney-piece was the work of Rondelet, Francis the First’s famous sculptor; its centre exhibits the arms of France, encircled by a wreath and crowned by Diana’s crescent. There are two pictures at this end of the hall; one of Francis killing a wild boar in the forest, the other of the famous combat of a condemned man with a loup-cervier, which desolated the country round Fontainebleau. He was a nobleman, and besought permission to meet his death in this manner, but, having exterminated the monster, he was pardoned. At one time this hall was called Galerie des Réformés; for the Calvinists, with Admiral Coligny at their head, here presented to Francis the Second the first petition in which they styled themselves “Reformers.” The Admiral was their organ to the young king, whose brother was to be his murderer. The ball on the Duke of Orleans’ marriage was given in this hall. The windows to the park look on the Étang and its pavilion, which bore the name of Cabinet de Conseil, when Catherine de Médicis, and after her the Cardinal de Richelieu, retired there with their secret advisers. Directly beneath the gallery is the Salle Louis Philippe, which was, in Louis the Fourteenth’s reign, the Dauphin’s apartments, now a magnificent dining-hall, supported by Doric columns, and ornamented in the taste of the Renaissance. Opposite its five windows, on the parterre, are three superb entrances, opening on a corridor lighted by glass doors, which look on the Cour Ovale; a fourth entrance communicates with the Porte Dorée. It is a splendid porch or portico, brilliant with gilding and just revived frescos, its length the width of the dining-hall—at one end opening on the Allée de Maintenon, named, by the proudest and vainest king in Europe, after his plebeian wife; at the other on the Oval Court, which I mentioned before, but did not tell you that the donjon which terminates it is the spot where Louis the Thirteenth was christened when seven years old. A flight of steps on either side of the entrance arch conducts to the open chamber it supports, and the child was named there in public; all catholic ceremonial observed, that no doubts of his creed might rest on the people’s minds.
Perhaps my long description of Fontainebleau has wearied you, and yet I might continue it much longer; so large a portion of French history is connected with its walls. The guide pointed to the tower in which the Marshal, Duc de Biron, past the night after his arrest, ere he was transferred to the Bastille. Notwithstanding that Henry the Fourth had three times saved his life in battle, and designed to make him his son-in-law, he conspired against him with the Duke of Savoy. France was to be divided into as many petty sovereignties as provinces, all placed under the protection of the king of Spain; and the bribe which seduced Biron, who was the vainest and bravest man of his day, consisted of Franche Comté and Burgundy, and a marriage with a daughter of Spain or Savoy. Lafin, confidant of the traitor-duke, betrayed him in turn, but had the art to persuade him of the king’s ignorance, when he summoned his former friend to his presence, and the marshal denied everything.
“Marshal,” said the king, “I must hear from your own mouth what I unhappily know already. Speak to me but frankly, and whatever your crime against me, I promise you protection and pardon.”
“Your majesty presses a man of honour too far,” said the marshal impatiently.
“Would to God it were so,” rejoined Henry the Fourth sadly; “reflect ere you reply.” The general remained silent, and the king walked slowly to the door; and, as he reached it, said, still more in sorrow than in anger: “Adieu, Baron de Biron.” He was tried and condemned; and beheaded within the gates of the Bastille.
The Cour du Cheval Blanc, silent as it is now, calls back Napoleon’s adieus to his old guard, which took place here.
April 6th.
Notwithstanding the most bitter of east winds, we have ridden over great part of the forest, the wildest and finest I ever saw. Its groves of old oak, interspersed with tracts clothed with black firs, and hills, and valleys of barren stone; the Hermitage of Franchard; the wonderful Roche qui pleure, through which filters water, which the good peasants still collect as a sovereign remedy against disease, are on the Paris side of the forest. Shortly before arriving at Franchard, there is a plain iron cross raised on a heap of flints, the scene of some old murder. Our road from the town lay through oaks in their hundred years’ majesty: the box forming dark thickets everywhere, and the ground between already blue and white with periwinkles and anemones. In summer it is one carpet of flowers. Franchard had a hermitage even in the time of our Richard Cœur de Lion; it became afterwards a monastery which was also deserted: shortly after the battle of Castelnaudary, its last inhabitant arrived thither, and lived and died alone in its ruins. It was whispered at the time, that the Comte de Moret, who (some said) had perished in the battle, had on the contrary received but some slight wounds which in no way endangered his life; he had disappeared: and the recluse who hid himself in poverty and solitude at the same period was believed to conceal from the vindictive cardinal the companion in arms of the unhappy Montmorency.
The valley of La Solle is on the other side of the grande route. The steep road dips suddenly down, winding among fantastic rocks, piled one on the other, overgrown with brilliant mosses, trees growing luxuriantly on or among them. I noticed some whose trunks shot upwards from so narrow a place of support, that the branches on either side seemed extended to poise them, as a bird spreads its wings for the air to bear it up; and others, whose roots stretched themselves over the bare granite platform, casing it to its edge, and thence dropped down to plant themselves in the earth which nourishes them scantily. In this part of the forest the holly grows everywhere, and is gay with red berries even now. We were doubtful of the way back; and Fanny, whose sagacity has been so often proved, was called on to assist. When the reins are laid on her neck, she is perfectly aware of her own importance, and stops and snuffles at each road she sees, often choosing short-cuts and footpaths. To-day, after leaving the valley, we came suddenly on one of the abrupt rocky hills which we have met with often here; there was a broad alley on each side, but Fanny chose neither, and taking a little track through the trees, trotted on and up, climbing like a cat, and when I dismounted to ease her, pulling me on by the rein I held. Arrived at the top, from the little arid plain we found a view worth our trouble; down the other side she led again, emerging in a bridle-road, from which branched eight others. She considered a moment, and then, hurrying as she does when her mind is made up, she chose one of these alleys, and in five minutes we passed a finger-post, which marked it, “Chemin de Fontainebleau.”
On the Paris road is the Croix du Grand Veneur: he is the hero of terrible tales, being a spectre, who often and on various occasions has appeared to the kings of France. The last who saw him was Henry the Fourth. One day of the year 1599 he had been hunting unsuccessfully, for his hounds had twice lost the scent, and he was slowly riding back through the forest on the Moret side, when his ill-humour was increased by suddenly hearing the cry of dogs and the flourish of hunting horns, which seemed to sound a triumphant blast. The king, who rode at some distance from his attendants with the Count of Soissons, turned angrily to him, “Note who the bold intruder may be,” he exclaimed, and the count, with several of the courtiers, spurred towards the sound. As they disappeared, the king started back, for a tall huntsman,—tall beyond human height,—attired in black, with a shining eye and livid cheek, stood before him. He accosted the monarch in a voice of thunder, and said, “Amendez-vous.” Henry’s look for a moment quailed before him; and when he fixed it on the spot where the huntsman had stood, he was gone. The Count of Soissons and his companions returned, said they had seen, but at a distance, a dark huntsman, at the head of a numerous hunt, mounted on horses which seemed to feel the rocky soil no obstacle. Whether he came to warn the king of a darkening future and bloody close, I cannot tell; some say he spoke more than the monarch told; he rode the rest of the way in silence. After this apparition the Grand Veneur continued to be heard at times, though he was not seen again. Once, (Sully says,) when he waited impatiently for Henry’s return to communicate some important affair, he heard the horns and horses’ hoofs close to the chateau, and ran out to meet him, but nothing was visible; and when the king had really come, he learned he had been at the time four leagues away.
7th April.
Walked to-day (the east wind sharper than ever) to the church at Avon, where Monaldeschi lies, under the bénitier. The crime for which Christina murdered him was never precisely known; but it was hinted that he had been a favoured and then fickle lover. Taking the right road through the park, and along the canal made by Henry the Fourth, it is hardly distant the quarter of a league it is called; we took the wrong and a much longer way. The little old edifice was built in the tenth century, and stands at the end of the unpaved dirty village. A washerwoman and a dozen children came to see what we wanted. We wanted to get into the locked-up church, and were desired to apply at the seminary, which is nearly opposite. The porter issued with the key. He was the roundest, merriest, ugliest, piece of human nature imaginable; I should think he acted cook as well as porter, and he is quite out of keeping with the spot where he stood. With its low gloomy arches, and damp irregular pavement of worn tombstones, it seems the fitting place for the hurried interment of a murdered man, in the dusk of a winter’s evening. One of the flags of the choir is marked with the fleurs-de-lis, and a half-effaced figure; below is the heart of Philip le Bel’s queen, who died here about 1304. Two old painted windows light the church dimly; near the entrance door, just in front of the antique vessel for holy water, is the narrow stone inscribed with ancient letters, “Ci gît Monaldexi.” The porter told a strange story.
Three years since, (the village church being then always left open,) a party of Englishmen came to visit it. They arrived with a number of workmen, hired in the cottages, and whom they had paid beforehand, and liberally, for the work to be done. By their employers’ order these men opened the grave, to take possession of the skeleton, for the English gentlemen asserted that Monaldeschi was their relation. The curé had been absent, but returned during this extraordinary operation, and flew to forbid sacrilege! The workmen ceased, but they had been so diligent that the bones were already uncovered, and the Englishmen insisted on carrying them away; and, despite of the curé, held the skull fast. Finding his remonstrances useless, the priest hurried away, and returned with some gens-d’armes, when the skull was replaced in the coffin.
The Englishmen were allowed to depart. They had cracked, in their labour, the grave-stone, and crumbled a good many of those beside it; a large square of brick-work replaces them. “Since then,” the porter said, winking at us, as if he fancied we too had some design on the bones he guards, “when strangers are curious, I accompany them, and we keep the church locked.”
CHAPTER IV.
Moret—The Nunnery—Louis the Fourteenth’s black Daughter—Two useful Saints—Villeneuve la Guyard—Descriptions deceitful—Strange Cure for Blood to the Head—A River-god on terra firma—Sens—St. Colombe, Thomas à Becket’s refuge—Villeneuve le Roy—Place where the Vine was first cultivated—Auxerre—The Chapter’s hundred years’ Law-suit concerning Fur Trimmings—The Canons’ Games at Ball—The Cathedral, occupying the site of the first Christian Chapel—St. Germain—The Saint’s refusal to get out of his Grave to reform England—Tombs of Dukes of Burgundy—Ill-treatment in a Church from a School at its devotions—Lucy le Bois—The Face in a Hole in the Wall—Taken for a beast—Arnay le Duc—La Rochepot—A danger avoided through Grizzel’s affection—An unamiable Carter—Chalons, Cæsar’s head-quarters—Cross seen by Constantine—Punishment of past times for unskilful Physicians—A Prince of Portugal, Monk at St. Laurents—Cathedral.
10th April.
A pretty road through the forest, on whose borders is the old town of Moret; its ancient gateway and the ruins of its fortifications and strong castle looking picturesque through the trees. The fine gothic church remains, but the convent, which was honoured by the presence of a royal nun, no longer exists. Louis the Fourteenth had by his wife, Maria Theresa, a daughter, who came into the world perfectly black. The King not choosing to own a negress, it was asserted that she had died; she was committed to the custody of these walls, and well and respectfully treated, for the abbess received a large annuity on her account. It is said that her royal father and mother sometimes came to see her; perhaps the comparison between what she was and might have been, but for the caprice of nature, preyed on her mind, for her life was not a long one. Two saints, of unquestionable merit, have chapels in their honour near Moret. St. Nicaise will cure the most obstinate cough, and St. Memert the bite of a mad dog.
The next post very uninteresting, to Fossard, which is one of those wretched-looking villages which straggle along each side of the broad, bad roads of France. Stopped to sleep at Villeneuve la Guyard, a hopeless-looking place with a good inn, though it does not fulfil the promise of its printed card, which speaks of “new and splendid furniture, French and English attendance, large and commodious stables, baths, and a garden of rare plants adjoining.” The chambers hung with painted canvass, thick with the dust of years, and the square hole cut in the panel of the door, that the blast rushing in might prevent the chimneys smoking, did not quite answer the expectations raised. The groom of the filthy stable, for French stables are cleaned once a year only, was a feeble, gray peasant. The fat girl waited alternately on us and the diligence dinner; the baths were invisible, as was the garden, unless represented by the strip where primroses and cabbages grew among broken crockery, protected by the paling, on which hung to dry an avenue of cotton pocket-handkerchiefs. There was nothing to see when we had walked round the little church, and been driven home by the troop of urchins who, just out of school, clattered after me in sabots. Returned to the inn yard, we found there an amusing specimen of French manners in a certain class. By the well sat, in an oilskin cape and cloak, an old gentleman, who with his wife we had seen arrive in a one-horse vehicle. He was dripping like a river-god, and she, in the attitude of Hebe, pouring on his bare head jugs of well-water. As neither were at all embarrassed, we were soon acquainted; he had attacks of blood to the head, and therefore the watering of it by three buckets at a time is performed twice a day, and the operation of cupping three times a week, by his wife, who has taken lessons on purpose; like some other good people, she likes complaining, and before we had been known to each other five minutes, she told me that since her husband had retired from business, this malady had come upon him; that they had travelled to see the sea, and it had ennuyé him; that they were now on their way to drink the waters in Savoy, and he already spoke of turning back; in short, that he was impatient and fanciful, and made her life insupportable. A great source of grief and fidget to him was the old horse, lean and uncleaned, who daily dragged themselves and baggage in the heavy vehicle. He wondered he was not fat and hungry like ours.
11th April.
Left early, intending to sleep at Sens for the sake of the cathedral. Pont-sur-Yonne, which lies on the road, has an old church and fine bridge. The entrance to Sens under the arched gateway is striking; and its boulevards and public promenades remarkably neat and pretty. When we rode into the yard of the Ecu, we found mine host, who came to meet us, high in his charges and impertinent besides; so turned the horses’ heads again,—merely fed them at an auberge close by, and went on. I saw only the exterior of the fine cathedral. A quarter of a league from Sens was the abbey of St. Colombe, where Thomas à Becket hid himself three years from the fury of Henry of England. A beautiful shining day, for the east wind has yielded at last. The approach to Villeneuve le Roy is through a pretty tranquil country, the road winding along the bank of the river, and sheltered on the other side by an abruptly rising ground, planted with vineyards. An elbow in this road brings suddenly in sight the old town’s gateway: like that of Moret, an entrance-arch, flanked by turrets, with the gouttière above, whence boiling pitch and lead poured on the intruder.
It is of Louis the Sixth’s time, I was going to say it has frowned there ever since; but this evening, in the golden sunshine, it smiled in harmony with all the rest: the troops of gay boys at play under the care of a good-natured priest, and the bright little stream which bathed Fanny’s tired feet.
We had good beds and a decent stable at the inn; but its butcher and cook are “leagued to destroy.” Our French acquaintance had arrived before us,—just as the lady-innkeeper was telling me her country people were far better travellers than formerly, as they ate and drank and paid uncomplainingly now, as the English once had done, my friend, who had seen us dismount, came to greet me, and tell (in the landlady’s presence) that every thing in the house was extravagant and execrable; and then, having surveyed the chamber selected for us, insisted on her yielding one better, in which we are installed, thanks to her. We walked together in the evening to the pretty gardens outside the town: it has a similar entrance at its other extremity, and the ancient walls and towers of the fortifications remain; and the moat, converted to peaceful uses, now forms bright gardens, covered with blossom.
I bought for a franc an enormous basket of carrots for the horses; and when we returned to the inn, my companion elevated one before the eyes of the landlady, reproaching her with its being the same size for which that morning she demanded five sous!
12th April.
Left Villeneuve for Auxerre; a north-east wind and gloomy sky again, under which the scene looked disenchanted. A less uninteresting country as far as Joigny, which is built on the height, its houses and churches rising in terraces with a broad quay and handsome bridge, but neither trees nor flower-gardens as in a country town in England; looking this grey, cold day only dirt and barrenness. We met, as we passed along, our feverish acquaintance, he walking to cool his head without a hat; his lady abusing the hotel, where their horse was feeding; they too were bound for Auxerre.
Nothing more melancholy than Joigny, excepting the road beyond it; it crosses the bridge, and lies over a marshy flat, lately overflowed by the river, and seeming to produce little, saving a few willows and broom-like poplars. We have pavement again for some miles here, and the sides of the road were impassable. Leaving Bassou, a hopeless looking place, behind, we were in the vine country: an ugly one it is, but this is the place of all Gaul where the grape was first grown in the third century. From a long steep hill we looked back on a most gloomy though extensive view; its descent leads to Auxerre. At the Porte de Paris was our hatless friend, who had passed us on the way; he was good-naturedly watching our coming to point out the road to the Leopard; we should otherwise have made a long round instead of riding down the avenue to the quay where it stands. It is a comfortable and reasonable inn, and the view up and down the broad river, with bridge and islands and barges, very pretty. The avenue before the hotel, and along the Yonne, is the walk of the Auxerre fashionables; a formidable looking “jeune France” was promenading there, but now magnificent in curls and beard and crimson cloak and cigar. The town, whose streets are high and narrow, looks to advantage from the river; it is built in an amphitheatre, the old abbey of St. Germain, the prefecture, the cathedral towers, and those of other fine churches, rising tier above tier over the quay. I walked in quest of letters to the post-office, and found that to do so required strength of mind, for a bonnet forms no part of my baggage: and I went in my riding habit, as I dismounted, followed by all the little boys and girls, and some of their papas and mammas: the very clerk at the post-office, civil as he was, could not refrain from several questions, the “how and whence” respecting the first habit which had been seen at Auxerre. Yet we are only forty leagues from Paris, and the Parisians have lately made riding so fashionable, that I have heard young ladies, asked whether they liked the exercise, exclaim they “adored it,” and seen gentlemen of fifty on ponies follow in the train of the riding master. The cathedral is small and beautiful; we stood near one of the side entrances admiring the elegance of its Nun’s-walk, and the view down the aisle, where it circles round the choir, and arches and columns seem crowded together.
The finely carved capitals of these columns were lighted brilliantly and variously by the sunbeams through the rich stained windows. The prospect from the nave would be open to the chapel behind the high altar, but that modern taste has suspended over the latter a wooden ornament, closely resembling the tester of a bed; it intercepts the view of the lovely little chapel, and the strangely light pillars which support it; on one of these is pasted a paper, promising “plenary indulgence” to all such as on saints’ days, therein specified, shall recite particular prayers. So all who are “heavy laden” repair to the chapel at Auxerre.
On the wall close by is a tablet to the memory of Georges de Beauvoir, Marshal of Chastellux, who, in the year 1444, retook the town of Crevant from the English, and with his own hand (says the inscription) killed the Lord High Constable of Scotland. The celebrated Amyot, preceptor of King Henry the Third, is also interred here; it is said that the chapter, formerly rich, ruined itself by lawsuits, and one is particularly cited which lasted a long time. The canons asserted their right of wearing ermine on their robes; it was forbidden them; some yielded, others were stubborn: they were called, to distinguish them, “Trimmed” and “Untrimmed.” Litigation ensued, and the last named gained the lawsuit, when it had been pending one hundred years.
The cathedral has some customs peculiar to itself. A strange one was abolished only in the sixteenth century. The canons were in the habit of playing at ball in the nave, and for money, and the sums thus won were expended in feasts for the chapter. It is said that it was erected on the site of the first Christian chapel, raised here in the third century.
The old church of St. Germain near (now that of the Hôtel Dieu, and barbarously whitewashed) takes its name from the sixth Bishop of Auxerre, who first built it on the spot where stood the house in which he was born, and who was buried here in 448. The saint’s story says, that having travelled to England he there met and converted at Oxford one Micomer, a learned doctor, whom he then made his coadjutor in reclaiming Great Britain from Paganism. Micomer returned to France, died, and was buried. St. Germain visiting his tomb at Tonnerre, apostrophized his disciple, now a saint. “Micomer,” he said, “rise from your tomb: there are fresh disorders and fallings away in England and Ireland; rise and go, set all in order.” A voice replied from the tomb, “Be tranquil, father, on that subject, for England and Ireland will not need our interference, and heaven commands my body to remain in peace here, and my soul in eternal glory.” St. Germain rejoined, “It is well, may I soon be with you in paradise.” The subterranean church of St. Germain is famous for its antiquity, and also because it contains, besides the tombs of sainted bishops, those of Hugh, Duke of Burgundy, father of Hugues Capet of France, as well as of other dukes of Burgundy, and counts of Auxerre; (for the county of Auxerre belonged by turns to France and her turbulent province.) It was united to the crown in Charles the Fifth’s reign, ceded to the duchy by Charles the Sixth, and became finally French when Charles the Téméraire, last sovereign of Burgundy, was killed before Nancy. We did not see the vaults, for the pale, diseased faces which came round us, as this is now the hospital church, made it by no means tempting to stay. Near the church stands its ancient belfry, a picturesque tower. We went in search of St. François, which is in the lower part of the town, and seen outside is a noble gothic building; within it disappointed me, though indeed I had barely time to judge of it, for as we entered we found a whole school on its knees, which, without any change of position, saluted my habit and myself with shouts and hootings notwithstanding the reproving looks of a young priest, and fairly drove us out and followed us home, pushing against us to stare closer; so, having had no room to walk, and barely enough to breathe to-day, I must buy a bonnet at Chalons.
Rouvray, 14th of April.
Cold weather still, but sunny, and the bridge and steep road which looks on Auxerre, once passed, no view to reward for the long succession of bare hills. Near the town the vine is much cultivated, but in France its stunted stumps give no charm to scenery. Further on the soil is worse, but prodigiously manured, and they grow oats and rye in what appears a stiff red clay, lightened only by layers of flat stones, which would break English hearts and ploughs. Nothing to relieve the eye, not a bush, not a speck of green, not an habitation for miles on either side of the glaring white road; we travelled for ever up the steep rise, and down the sharp descent, which succeed as like each other and uninteresting as if all had been cast in the same mould. Fed the horses at a lone farm-house, and reached at sunset the prettier country near Lucy le Bois; for the road for about a mile passes through a young oak wood, and it was really refreshing to the sight, as we had not seen a tree for twenty-seven miles. The village stands in a sheltered and rather pretty valley, at the foot of a hill, which is a petty mountain, so thought the post horses, who toiled up it. We got in at dusk. The sharp landlady was out, and her delegates were two good civil old women, her aunt and mother-in-law, and though it is an humble inn, we had good beds and a bright fire, and an excellent dinner from the hands of poor Annette, whose province is to clean the house, attend the comers, cook the meals, wash the linen, milk the cows, make bread, cheese, and butter, and bear (she told me in confidence) the blows of the spoilt child.
When the hostess returned, we saw no more of the old people and their civility, but the fine lady and her imposition instead.
Slept at Lucy, and rode on in the morning to this town, Rouvray, a melancholy road and wretched place, but the beds, cook, and stabling of the Hôtel de l’Ancienne Poste very good. As D—— always stops to feed the horses on the way, and the wonder my costume excites becomes very annoying, I to-day took refuge in the stable, and saw there a great face in a blue night-cap, staring at me through a hole in the wall. Before reaching the town we passed a group of labourers at work, and men and women ran to the edge of the high bank above the road to look down at me. I laughed at their astonishment; a fact the foremost of the group communicated to the rest, saying, “Voilà que cela nous rit.” “Cela” does not mean a human being, so that I do not exactly know for what they took me. Mons. Digy’s printed card asserts, in English, that “Post hotel is situated in the most fine quarter of town,” which means, the dirtiest end of the long street. The wind is high, and this room smokes, so that we sit with the door ajar, and the creaking sign, which hangs just at our windows by iron links, and swings backwards and forwards, excites agreeable thoughts of dead men hung in chains. We are to remain a day or two, notwithstanding, as I am not well.
We hear there is great poverty hereabouts, yet provisions, except bread, which sells at the Paris price, are very reasonable. Meat is only eight or nine sous a pound; but the labourer receives no more than twenty-four sous for his day’s hire, and the country people, like the Irish, live almost entirely on potatoes.
19th April.
Left Rouvray for Arnay le Duc, and saw nothing which at all interested me by the way, excepting the return post horses trotting gaily home by themselves. We have fine weather at last, and so warm, that we stopped on a little plain, and sat in the shelter of one of its hillocks, thinking to do so undisturbed; but a bevy of half black Bourguignonnes, who were tending thin sheep and unsightly pigs at a distance, took up a position which commanded ours, and grinned fearfully till they drove us out. They form a very unengaging population. The women, from hard work, soon lose all trace of feminine features, and their costume is unbecoming, as their short petticoats display their bare, thick, brown ancles. Arnay le Duc is rather prettily situated on the river Arroux, in a valley, which was formerly commanded by its strong castle, of which remains but one heavy tower. The Hôtel de la Poste is exceedingly good, and through this town, for the first time, I was not hooted, as near it lives a young French lady, who rides.
20th April, Hôtel du Parc, Chalons.
Sixty miles in two days of burning weather. I feared Fanny might suffer, and we decided on remaining a day in this noisy inn, which is not an agreeable one. I believe the “Trois Faisans” to be better. The plain of Givry, which we passed over, is surrounded by an interesting country, as on the right are wooded defiles, backed by a range of bold hills; and to the left, beyond the slender white pillar raised in the meadows, (none could tell me wherefore,) the view is fertile and extensive, stretching back towards Arnay. In front lay the dirty town, once fortified. We fed our horses there, and found the inhabitants more savagely insolent than usual. When we remounted, Fanny, and even the patient Grizzel, excited by their shouts, plunged so violently that they soon cleared a way through the night-capped crowd. From the long hill above Givry, the green plains and distant heights look to advantage, as does the old château, with peaked roof and turrets, which stands by the winding river in the hollow. We next came on a broad moor, and the horses enjoyed a long gallop over turf, the first since Salisbury Plain. It is broken by a few patches of brushwood, and covered with a very beautiful purple flower, whose name is unknown to me. We saw no habitation for miles; none, indeed, till we reached its extremity, where there is a lone inn, with ruined outhouses, in a wild and solitary situation, just fitting for the last scene of a Porte St. Martin melodrama.
The road thence descends suddenly, edging a precipice, and commanding a view which is a contrast to all we have toiled through till now. We rode under abrupt banks, and fragments of reddish rock, and below was a glen, shut in by hills, or rather small stony mountains, planted with vines, wherever cultivation is not impossible. There was no verdure, for the vine stalks are yet bare of leaves, and the face of the hills is only varied by the different tints of rock and soil, and the enclosures of the small fields, formed by piles of slaty stones thrown up from them; yet the prospect was beautiful as well as grand. The broken hill nearest us stood forth in deep shadow; those before, as well as the narrow valley, lay in splendid sunshine, and beyond them, through the haze of heat and distance, shone the windings of the Saône, and stretched the rich plains of Bresse, and above all towered the range of the Jura, resembling the cloud which hung over it, but that its rosy white was more delicate still. At our feet were two villages, so hidden in their nooks, that we perceived them only when the road passed directly above. The furthest is La Rochepot; its square castle, flanked by four massive towers, covers the surface of the solitary rock which forms its foundation, and rises among the cabins, yet at a commanding distance, as (ere power had departed and respect had followed) the old noble once did among his vassals.
Two watch-towers are still standing, and the windows opened at different epochs, some arched, some Elizabethan, make frames for the blue sky seen through them, or are lightly curtained by ivy, which seldom grows luxuriantly in France; its situation and itself are such, as, had Scott seen, would not have been left without a story.
The grande route winding, passes directly in its front, and the precipice is scarcely pleasant with a starting horse, particularly as the carters we meet crack their whips at me, kindly curious to know whether the lady’s seat is as unsafe as strange. Arrived at the stone cross on the hill, we lost sight of the castle, but obtained a lovelier view of the valley, as green meadows and fruit-trees in flower enlivened the same bold scenery. I had led Fanny down, as the descent is rapid, and as I was about to remount, only Grizzel’s affectionate disposition spared us an inconvenient adventure. By the road-side are various marly pools, whose thin mud seems unlikely to tempt even a thirsty horse; yet Grizzel left free when D—— came to assist me, walked towards, and into it, bending her knees and making preparations for rolling, in utter disregard of the saddle and valise she carries. D—— ran to the edge, but the edge was slippery and the pool deep, and Grizzel too intent on her bath to listen to shouts or commands; a stroke of the long whip was the last resource, and out of the water she splashed, and, to our dismay, trotted up a by-path. What was to be done? to pursue would have quickened her retreat; by a lucky thought, we led away little Fanny, and the poor grey had not gone a hundred yards ere she turned to look for her, and though she hesitated a little, preferred the risk of feeling the whip again to losing her companion; so we rode peaceably on to Chagny, which is situated in a rather pretty country, though beyond the valley. I asked an old woman who was there at work, the name of its tiny river; she turned round to gaze at it, as if she then saw it for the first time, and said “Cela? cela s’appelle la rivière.” Met again to-day several soldiers going on furlough; one from Africa, bronzed by its sun. We stopped him to ask whether we are likely to find our friend Captain ——’s regiment at Lyons. From Chagny to Chalons, though but four leagues, seemed a long distance from the badness of the road: between them, on a lone flat, we passed the stone erected to the memory of Antoine Prévost a countryman, assassinated here for the sake of a five-franc piece in his pocket. Met an exceedingly uncivil waggoner with his team, who made a face at me! and got in at sunset, the frogs in the ditches croaking so loud a “good night,” that they startled the horses.
Chalons existed as a town of importance, even previous to Cæsar’s entrance into Gaul, and was called Orbandale. Cæsar made it the head-quarters of several legions, and it increased in importance till the reign of Constantine. The inhabitants boast that near their city he beheld in the clouds the luminous cross which converted him to Christianity.
It was at Chalons that the marriage was negotiated between Clovis and Clotilda, by whose influence he afterwards became first Christian King of France. It was to him that St. Remy made that fine speech before his baptism; “Bow the head, barbarian! burn what you have adored; reverence what you have burned.” The scene of the exploits of the famous Brunehaud was also laid here; she was second wife to King Gontran; his first spouse Austragilda, who died at Chalons, made a singular request to her husband:—“I pray you, sire, put to death all those unskilful leeches who have failed to cure my malady.” King Gontran promised to give her this token of affection, and kept his word, and yet—he has been canonized!!! The parish of St. Laurent, which was formerly a little town with privileges of its own, occupies an island formed by the Saône. It had once a convent of Cordeliers, in the church of which was the tomb of a monk who was its superior. The historian of Chalons says he was the only brother of Alphonso the Fifth, King of Portugal; in 1481, he wandered hither and assumed the cowl: the king dying childless, ambassadors came to offer him the crown he had inherited; he refused it, and dismissed them as well as his mother the queen dowager, who strove to persuade him by entreaties and vain tears. At last, in despair, she departed and retired to die among the poor Cordeliers of St. Claire of Auxonne, where she is interred. Of all the riches of Portugal, Father John only accepted what sufficed to decorate the church of his convent, and died in 1525, having chosen to be the principal of five and twenty mendicant monks, rather than to rule a kingdom.
Having purchased a bonnet, I walked after dinner to the cathedral. It is believed to have existed from the earliest epoch of Christianity; ruined by the Saracens, it was magnificently rebuilt by Charlemagne in the commencement of the ninth century. It fell into decay five hundred years after, and the present edifice is of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. It is an extensive and solemn-looking building. We saw it imperfectly and for a few minutes only; not arriving till after sunset. The side aisles are shorter than the nave, and the arch, which descends lower where the transept crosses the latter, gives it weight and gloom; but the nun’s walk, with an open gallery below and above, is light and beautiful. The armed and gilded figures, which seem to guard the choir, belong to the tombs of some of the old Counts of Chalons buried here. The chapels are rich in ornaments, having belonged to the chief families of the country, mostly to those which have given bishops to Chalons. In one of them kneels a painted statue attired in its robes, which, though it might possess little illusion in broad daylight, made us start in the gloom, looking though “lifeless so very lifelike.” The unfinished portal is about to be completed; and this part of the cathedral is screened off for the present by most curious old tapestry, seemingly of Francis the First’s time. The small irregular place in front of the church is surrounded by houses with projecting upper stories, and carved cherubims at their corners, resembling those at Tewkesbury; but nothing at Chalons appears to date back to 590, though it is pretended that a part of the palace occupied by King Gontran still remains. We go to-morrow, for the quay below our windows is the spot whence the Saône steamers start; and the noise exceeds that of a Saturday night at Birmingham: the horses are uncomfortably situated, not only from the extreme filthiness of the stable, but because one end of its enormous space is merely separated by a curtain from the open coach-house, and the other by a glass partition from the kitchen; luckily they are good travellers. We dined yesterday in our own rooms and well, and to-day at the table d’hôte, the worst I have seen yet, and having a nasty appendage in a lavoir opposite, with often-used soap on its edge, and dirty towels for drapery; the diners washed their hands as they came in—a most odious custom.
CHAPTER V.
Tournus—Greuze’s grave—Mâcon—The walking Wedding—Retirement of a Count of Mâcon, with thirty Knights, to the Abbey of Cluny—Dealings of his Successor with evil Spirits—His exit from Earth in the Car of a black Visitor—His Son turning Monk through fear—The County sold by his Daughter Alice to France—Bloodless occupation of Mâcon by the Huguenots—Mâcon retaken through bribery by the Marshal of Tavannes—Madame de Tavannes’ mode of increasing her Revenues—Sauteries de Mâcon—Farce of St. Poinct—Assassination of Huguenot Prisoners—Sang froid of Catholic Dames—A Russian Noble—Villefranche—Privilege granted to its married Men—Descent into Lyons—Monastère des deux Amans, supposed Herod and Herodias—Fortress of Pierre Encise—The Prison of Cinq Mars—Fort commanding the Croix Rousse—Homage paid to the wooden Statue of 1550—Hôtel de l’Europe—View of Fourvières—Its Church escaping violation throughout the Revolution—The Antiquaille on the site of the Palace where Germanicus was born—Traces of fire in Nero’s time—Recollections of Princess Mary of Württemberg—Her love of Art to the last—Nourrit’s Funeral—A Racer’s determination to trot—Going to races—Mistaken for a Candidate—Perrache—Horses, riders, and accoutrements—Triumph of the King’s Fête—A Boat upset—The Tower of the fair German-Croix Rousse—Wretchedness of the Operatives—Causes of Insurrection in 1831—The most ancient Monastery in Gaul—Church of Aisnay.
Tournus, Hôtel de l’Europe,
23d April.
Arrived here last evening, having left the inn yard at Chalons under the inspection of all the guests assembled there for breakfast. Remembered, when we had crossed the bridge, having left no address for my bonnet, which is to be sent after me to Mâcon; and were obliged to ride back.
From Chalons to Sennecey, two posts; a long fertile plain bounded by hills; to the left, in the distance, the Swiss mountains. The only sights at dirty Sennecey, a horridly gigantic head grinning with its tongue out, transplanted from some fountain to the wall of the first house, and a very old fort at its extremity, within whose walls the parish church has been lately erected. The extensive plain which again succeeds is skirted by nearer and wooded hills, whose shade, as we ascended them, made a pleasant contrast to the burning, treeless flat below. We let poor Fanny drink from a clear stream gushing forth at the foot, over which has been built a neat lavoir. As we walked the horses up the steep, the view bespoke more comfort and plenty than does any part of France I have yet travelled. Green meadows and fruit trees in flower, and villages dotting valley and rising ground, reminded me of England; from the summit the prospect was enchanting. The descent before us was rapid, and a few crags made a bold foreground, as did the Swiss mountains a splendid distance. Tournus rose in the plain, with its old church towers and grey abbey, and suspended bridge across the Saône, whose shores, seen for many a mile of its windings, merit their name of “bords fleuris.” This is one of the very best inns we have yet rested in; close to the bridge and the river; in all respects superior to its rival, the Sauvage, which is at the entrance of the town in a dull and dirty situation: but, as it pays postilions at a ruinous rate, attracts the larger proportion of post carriages. My indifferent health alters our destination, for, dreading the heat of an Italian summer, we go hence to Switzerland instead of Nismes. Here we remain some days for letters, and to give rest to our horses, though they appear to require none. Our most intimate acquaintance is a fat gentleman, who is anxious we should take a furnished château in these environs, which has its own private theatre, (he has discovered D——’s taste already,) and, with grounds and large vineyard, is to be let for thirty pounds a year; and an old soldier of the empire, one of the few returned from Moscow, who holds young France in great contempt, and showed us the scar of a lance thrust in his throat; and a sabre cut which crippled his hand: two of the six wounds for which a grateful country bestows on him a pension of eight sous a day. Do not suppose him a beggar, or one to whom you could presume to offer money. Before he was drawn for the conscription he was a carpenter. After his military life, unable to return to his first trade, he took up another, and is now a carrier, and transports goods in his cariole from Tournus to the villages surrounding it. We made acquaintance in the stable, where I had gone to see Fanny luxuriously rolling on her clean straw; and he particularly prides himself on being divested of all prejudices belonging to the untravelled. Greuze, the painter of the sweet family-pieces we have so often admired in the Louvre, was born at Tournus; in the church is a monument erected in his honour.
27th April, Mâcon.
We loitered away the fine weather at Tournus, and took to-day the melancholy road hither, with a north-east wind which whirled its dust in our faces, and made us shiver, as we rode up and down long hills, which succeed each other without view or interest. We met a wedding trudging along a little path which wound through the clods of a ploughed field, and crossing the high road and ourselves in the direction of a village. Three fiddles preceded bride and bridegroom, who walked arm in arm, and half a dozen couples of friends and relatives followed; we made a bow to the bride, who was very plain and looked very proud. The fiddlers were conscientiously playing with all their might, and we heard the sharp, squeaking notes, “like the cracked treble of an old man’s voice,” long after we lost sight of them. The female peasantry hereabouts wear a strange kind of tiny hat tied on the top of the head, and the white cap: it is about large enough to fit that of a doll, and above a fair face might be picturesque, but worn over weather-beaten features, which the “foreign aid of ornament cannot serve,” adds to their natural ugliness; and being so small as barely to shade one eye, affords no protection against the burning summer. The Hôtel de l’Europe where we are lodged is a good inn situated on the quay: the view is pretty across the broad river, and to the plains beyond, and bounded by the Alps. The inn has good beds and civil masters, but a bad cook. We dined to-day at the table d’hôte, which consisted of only two besides ourselves, young men of no very brilliant intellect, for one asked the waiter whether the radishes served at table were of this or last year’s growth; and nothing could persuade the other that the insurrection of the Lyons workmen was not suscitated by the English, with a view to destroy the silk-trade. There is an old horse in these stables thirty-two years of age, they tell me once a favourite charger of Napoleon.
Mâcon is a very ancient town, and was of importance even in Cæsar’s time. Under the first race of French kings it formed part of the kingdom of Burgundy; under the second race the Counts of Mâcon had insensibly become hereditary, and after the reign of Hugues Capet, one of these, yielding to the devotional feelings which took sudden and absorbing possession of his mind, retired with his sons and thirty knights to the monastery of Cluny, where they assumed the cowl, while at the same time their wives became nuns in the abbey of Marcigny. The county of Mâcon then again formed part of Burgundy, and in 1245 it was sold to St. Louis, King of France, by Alice, who had inherited it from her father and brother.
The parent of the Countess Alice had, it was said, dark dealings with bad spirits; and choosing to place no bridle on his love of enjoyment, laid violent hands on property belonging to the two chapters of Mâcon, and to the abbey of Cluny. The hour of reckoning came, and a black man of fearful exterior appeared one day, and summoned the count at the foot of his palace stair. Forced to obey, he mounted, at his silent companion’s sign, a kind of car, and thereupon miraculously disappeared from his wondering subjects. His cries of despair were heard and lost in the distance. “Had he sunk into earth, or melted in air,” they knew not; but his son, witness of this event, became a monk, and ceded the county to his sister Alice, who had espoused a prince of the blood of France, and her wishes according with her husband’s, sold to Louis the holy king, a domain whose unholy lords ended so fatally. The palace was allowed to go to decay, and in the sixteenth century its ruined walls were still visible within the citadel which was in the centre of the town. The Countess Alice retired to the Abbaye des Lis near Melun, and died its abbess. Long after, in the year 1562, the Huguenots had obtained possession of Mâcon with little violence, and no shedding of blood. The Marshal of Tavannes several times, and each unsuccessfully, attempted to retake the town, until at last he entered it by the means of traitors bought over. Notwithstanding, in each street a combat awaited him, but the Huguenot party, weaker than his own, and unprepared, wasted its bravery. With the victorious troops there re-entered the town a number of women, who, on account of their shameful lives, had been expelled thence, as well as the priests, in whose habitations many of them had been found: they served to point out the houses belonging to men of the Huguenot creed, particularly of those who had been active in driving them forth.
The butchery which took place would be too horrid for minute detail; and by means of merciless pillage, Tavannes and other leaders made or augmented their fortunes. Madame de Tavannes was noted for being particularly clever in discovering in houses, which already seemed sacked, the hiding-places of plate, jewels and linen, with all which Mâcon at this time was better supplied than any town in France. The mournfully famous Sauteries de Mâcon took place when Tavannes, having departed, left in his place as governor, a certain St. Poinct, son of a woman who asserted that a priest was his father. This man was in the habit of terminating pastimes and festivals, to which he had invited all the Catholic ladies of the town, by inquiring if the farce were ready to be acted (it has since been called the farce of St. Poinct); and on receiving a reply in the affirmative, he led the way to the bridge—I believe the very same which still crosses from Mâcon to Bresse, built of stone, with thirteen arches. Hither by his command, one or two, sometimes more, of the Huguenot prisoners had already been summoned; and when St. Poinct arrived, surrounded by ladies richly attired, he would enter into gay conversation, joke with them, and give them hope of pardon, till at his well-known signal they were seized and cast from the bridge into the river. It does no honour to the Catholic dames and damsels of the day, that D’Aubigné wrote that “this man could instil into the minds of females, even maids and children, with the fruits and wines of his desserts, such feelings as taught them to look on without pity at the execution of a Huguenot.” Last night there arrived a Russian noble, with his train of serfs. The north-east wind blew bitterly, yet by the master’s order the groom, who had in some wise offended, passed the hours till morning, shivering on the box of the travelling-carriage. One of the hôtel waiters in pity carried him a bottle of wine, but as he passed
“Betwixt the wind and his nobility,”
the Russian interfered, the servant received a reprimand, and the serf no wine.
28th April.
From Mâcon to Villefranche the country improving; the low hills on the right relieve the eye, barren as they are. At St. George de Rognain’s, through which we passed, it was fair-day, and the streets so crowded, that we were forced to proceed at a slow walk,—stared, laughed, and hooted at, with what patience we might. At Villefranche it was market-day, and our progress was impeded by droves of horned cattle along the road: found, when we arrived, all the good rooms occupied at the post-house, therefore pay high prices for bad accommodation. We dined at the same table with a gentleman who has travelled on horseback from Dijon hither, and complains of the fatigue piteously! Humbert the Fourth, sire de Beaujeu, who died in 1202, singularly privileged the husbands of Villefranche, allowing them to beat their wives till the blood flowed, provided they did not die!!
29th April.
From Villefranche to Anse,
La plus belle lieue de France,
says the popular rhyme, and truly as we rode it, this warm, lovely morning, it was fair and fertile beyond any country we have travelled over. The high grounds on the right covered with vineyards; on the left, the meadows rich and green, and the Saône—a sheet of silver, and enough hill to give the scenery the boldness it would want otherwise.
Droves of oxen again on their way to supply Lyons; their drivers not more civil than yesterday,—for they merely said they were dangerous, without an attempt to leave us room at either side of the broad road; and their being savage was a likely consequence of the heat, and their fatigue—joined to the blows of the men, and the bites of their dogs. We kept in the rear till they opened their ranks themselves, and then cantered through this most unromantic peril. Our next meeting was with a runaway cow! galloping at full speed from her master, whom her unceremonious haste had commenced by overturning at the top of the hill, and who was making vain efforts to come up with her. As we left valiantly as much room with as little delay as possible for the fugitive, two post-carriages passed us, their inmates asleep as usual. We have not yet met two travellers with their eyes open.
We passed Anse, and its bridge over the narrow river, which is perhaps a branch of the Saône:—there is an air of comfort about the habitations of the poor, not visible in the north of France or nearer Paris. We noticed that the improvement commenced near Chalons. At Anse the cottages have neatly-enclosed gardens, gay with flowers and fruit trees; the sides of the Grande Route, which here turns abruptly towards the high hill which towers between it and Lyons, is bordered by poplars and willows; the green lanes, branching from it, have hedges, now white with hawthorn; and the peach-trees, which it is here the custom to plant between the rows of vine, are covered with their delicate blossoms. We remarked, that nowhere had we noticed so many fine châteaux as we saw dotting the country here; either placed, in commanding situations, on the hills to the right, or nestled in the nooks of the Mount d’Or itself, which we were ascending. Perhaps this accounts for the happier aspect of the dwellings of the poor: they are not, like those in Normandy, long, unmeaning buildings, with mansarde roofs; but for the most part extremely picturesque, built with high peaked turrets,—probably in the architecture of Henry the Fourth’s time. The steep road is uneven and stony, and we suffered from its dust, as well as the heat of the day; but the view of the country to the left, and that we were leaving behind, was at every step lovelier, and when we reached the summit, that of Lyons and its environs which lay below, in no degree inferior to it, though a thick haze shut out the Swiss mountains. We asked three men, within the space of five minutes, what might be the distance to Lyons: the first said two leagues; the second, one; and the third, three. The descent is long and rapid, passing some wild and beautiful gorges of the mountain, where the summer residences of the Lyonnese citizens are thickly scattered, and when we reached the bottom we were on the bank of the Saône, its windings on the left hand leading among green shores, and to the Isle Barbe, and on the right into Lyons. The Faubourg de Vaise, through which the grande route runs, gives no very favourable first impression. We believed that we had mistaken our way; but the crooked, narrow streets opened at last on the fine quay, and the finest town-view ever seen. We both made an exclamation of surprise at its beauty, which increased as we proceeded; but my enjoyment of which Fanny very much interfered with, as she chose to start more violently than ever, and the busy quays have often no barrier between them and the river below but rare placed curbed stones; sometimes not even these. We passed the ruined Monastery des Deux Amans, a Gothic building, of which little remains but the walls and a few windows with light and elegant tracery. It was of the order of St. Francis, and took its name from a tomb without an inscription, which existed here in the sixteenth century, and from time immemorial had been called that of the Two Lovers. Some, who exercised their erudition on the monument, affirmed it to be that of Herod, king of Judea, and his mistress Herodias, exiled to Lyons by Caligula. The high crag, which we rode beneath immediately after, starting so strangely up from the quay and among houses, with vegetation on its top, and a mere vestige of broken wall, was the seat of the strong fortress of Pierre Scise, held by the archbishops of Lyons till Henry the Fourth thought it wiser to take possession of it for the crown.
During Louis the Thirteenth’s reign, it was a state prison, and became that of Cinq Mars, whose memory Alfred de Vigny has made imperishable; another victim to the weakness of Gaston, and the jealousy of Richelieu. The rock was of considerable extent, for its fortifications were cut in its stone, and it hung over the river; but it has been blasted, and removed, to widen the quay and afford a passage for the fine road which leads in zigzags up the hill to the new fort, which commands the entire city, and whose cannon would above all find no difficulty in reducing to powder the Faubourg of the Croix Rousse, (built on a corresponding elevation on the other side of the river,) should the Croix Rousse think fit to renew its revolts of 31 and 34. At a guard-house we rode by, seeing 66th regiment on the soldiers’ caps, D—— asked news of our friend Capt. ——. His battalion is not here, but is expected shortly, and we have decided on remaining, as “we three” have not met for years.
After passing the rock of Pierre Scise, there is another and lower crag, on which are the rotting remains of a wooden statue. The people merely know that it is the bon homme de Vaise, or Monsieur de la Roche, who, in days of yore, gave marriage portions to their daughters, as is exemplified by the large wooden purse he holds in his hand. I find that he was an “échevin” of Lyons, of German family: his name was John Fleberg, and he had been so successful in commerce, that when the domains of the traitor Constable of Bourbon were confiscated to the crown, he was enabled to purchase various châteaux and estates situated in the neighbourhood of Lyons, and freed the inhabitants of Vaise of various seignorial exactions, which had before lain heavily on them.
As the statue has stood and mouldered on its present pedestal since the year 1550, or 1560, it has been thrown down by storm or accident several times, and on such occasions re-installed with great ceremony. It was long the custom to carry it in procession, once a year, through the streets, repaired and fresh painted, and adorned with flowers; but it has been discontinued of late, and the head and one arm are now broken away. We continued to ride along the quay till we had passed the cathedral, and crossing the second of the splendid suspension bridges which traverse the Saône, arrived at the Hôtel de l’Europe, whose entrance is from the Place Bellecour, and whose superb rooms look on the river, and the bridges of Foy and Fourvières; a glorious view, with the lights and shadows of sunset on it. This 30th of April has been more like August. We have arrived heated and tired, but the horses neither: both very hungry, and little Fanny rolling: which from the character we purposely give her, she has room to do in comfort, French ‘cochers’ standing in awe of quadrupeds.
1st of May.
I think a Frenchman, wishing to impress a foreigner favourably, might succeed better in affording him a glimpse of Lyons, than the same of Paris. Fancy yourself for a moment standing at one of these windows, the atmosphere more clear than further northward in France. The old church on the opposite bank of the Saône, with two low massive towers, each surmounted by a cross, is St. Jean, the cathedral, in part erected during the reign of Philip Augustus, contemporary of Richard Cœur de Lion. The ugly ruinous looking building adjoining is the Archevêché. Pius the Seventh, on his way to crown Napoleon, in Paris, Napoleon, on his road to be crowned in Italy, slept here! Behind St. Jean rise vineyards and fruit gardens in steep terraces, gay with white blossom and delicate verdure,—a background from which the grey cathedral stands darkly out. Directly above, on the extreme summit of the hill, is the small church of Notre Dame des Fourvières, remarkable for having escaped the ravages of the old revolution, during the whole of which it remained closed, and was re-opened by Pius the Seventh. A square tower built near it, on the same platform, in some degree hurting the effect of the tiny steeple, is a new and useless observatory. A little to the left, and lower on the hill, a long building with three pavilions, half concealed among old trees, is the Antiquaille, now an hospital and house of refuge: built on the site—it is said on the foundations—of the palace of the emperors, where Germanicus was born. Fourvières took its name from a splendid market erected there in Trajan’s reign, and called Forum Vetus. On the hill have been found at various times, pieces of fused metal and calcined stones, traces of the great fire which ruined the city in the time of Nero. The heights of Foy join those of Fourvières, and are equally bold, but more barren. When the poor young Princess Mary of Württemberg came to Lyons on her way to Pisa, where she died, she insisted on painting this view, though she did so supported by cushions. The landlord’s sister showed me her apartments, which join ours: she says the Princess was so gentle and uncomplaining, her husband so attached to her, and both she and the Prince so fond of their infant, whose sleeping place was in a cabinet adjoining their bed-chamber, and whom they were hanging over and admiring twenty times a-day, that it was heart-breaking to see her increasing feebleness. When they continued their journey, he would suffer no other person to give the assistance necessary, but himself carried her down the hôtel stairs, and lifted her into the carriage. She was an artist to the last; but a day or two before her decease at Pisa, cheered by warmth and sunshine, she asked for a pencil, and commenced a sketch of the fine view from the windows. “The ruling passion was strong in death.” When the Prince again passed through Lyons, on his return to Paris, without her, his appearance was so changed, that (the people of the inn say) they barely recognized him.
I have just been summoned to the Hôtel Terrace, which looks on the Place Bellecour, to see the passage of Nourrit’s funeral procession. His body had arrived at Lyons in a travelling carriage, and (transferred to a hearse only to cross the city) will again be deposited in a coach at its gates, and hurried up to Paris. The hearse was preceded by military, with music and drums muffled, and the pall covered with crowns of flowers, offerings made by the towns he has thus been borne through since Naples; but the two postilions, who in their common dress rode the hearse horses, were out of character with its plumes and draperies. A crowd of Lyons artists and of Nourrit’s admirers followed, but the archbishop has refused religious rites to the actor.
This is a most lovely night, like one in summer, and Lyons looks proud and imposing seen through the partial obscurity. The fine deep toll of the cathedral bell, and the discharges of cannon echoed back from the range of hills, and carried along by the dark river, adds to its effect. To-morrow, the fête of St. Philip, there will be gay rejoicings. We intend riding to see the races at La Perrache; for last year a horse who had excited great hopes, in the hour of trial, despite whip and spur, went round the course at a trot.
May 2nd.
As we were about to mount our horses in the inn yard this morning, a considerable crowd assembled to gaze at us, and completely filled the archway; so that when we attempted to ride out at it, the porter was obliged to employ rough words, as well as entreaties, and his wife whispered in my ear, that the people were so curious, because one of them had told the rest that I had arrived in Lyons for the sole purpose of riding one of these races. We could do nothing but move very slowly and patiently among the wide-eyed and open-mouthed spectators. I heard some one say close to me in a tone of contemptuous pity, “Sure, your honour, the likes of them knows no better,” and looking round, wondering to find so perfect a brogue so far from its birthplace, the speaker again replied to the expression of my face, “Is it where I come from, your honour? why then, from Cuffe-street,” and I saw a very red round face, with a merry blue eye, belonging to an Irishman with a wooden leg. Paddy has been a sailor, first in the English, then in the French service; but to quiet his conscience, which might reproach him with this caprice of which he has been guilty, he yields to the first the palm of superiority, which he says “altogether proceeds from the system of flogging,” as “the French navy will never flourish without that same.” He is now a good shoemaker, or rather he might be, for, like many of his countrymen, he abhors control; and prefers living on the good will of his acquaintances, in which he succeeds pretty well, as he is allowed to walk in and out of the hôtel yard, where his humour and appearance seldom fail to attract some traveller’s notice, though he never begs. When hunger presses and travellers have become scarce, he takes his line and his basket to the river and lives uncomplainingly on scanty fare till the good times come round again. As he is improvident, so he is popular: to-day with the silver D—— gave him, he went away in company of the inhabitants of the stable invited by him to share the treat. You see he keeps up his country’s character for hospitality.
We crossed the Place Bellecour on our way to the races, a noble square from its extent; its fine equestrian statue of Louis the Fourteenth, the view of the heights of Foy and Fourvières seen above the tall houses and the rows of “time honoured” lime trees, which make a shady promenade on its southern side. The review took place here. The race-ground is a plain forming the centre of a beauteous panorama. We took, to arrive there, the narrow street which leads to a place looking sufficiently desert and uncared for to be a fitting spot for the purpose it is put to, when the execution of a criminal takes place in Lyons; beyond is a noble boulevard, stretching from river to river, the Rhone to the Saône. Crossing this we almost directly came on the plain of Perrache.
Here at the starting place was erected a booth; and the ladies and authorities of Lyons, the préfet, &c., occupied seats prepared for them, the former elegantly attired, and the latter wearing a look of great interest, and (what was more wonderful still) of gravity. Persons on horseback and on foot were admitted within the well-sanded circle, and without it were ranged a line of gay equipages; next, under the tricoloured flag, came forth the competitors, two by two, a poster with a tied up tail, a cart-horse with a long flowing one, a thin light pony, a broken down English hunter, who, notwithstanding age and infirmities, I thought would have won, as the “spirit was willing,” but he was matched against the poster, and the last named kept up his awkward canter longest: and others, whose appearance, from being less decided, was not more favourable. There were six in all; the rider of the English horse had the least ludicrous dress, for he had imitated, though not faithfully, that of an English jockey, the rest had followed their own various tastes. He of the pony wore loose trousers of dingy white and a short open red jacket, both seamed and embroidered with tarnished gold, and his shoulders adorned with epaulettes, which seemed to have been ill-used in battle. At his saddle-bow he carried holsters; his legs had long leather leggins, and his feet shoes with spurs, but they rested in no stirrups. The rider of the poster wore a very long blue jacket covering his hips, long cloth pantaloons and no spurs, and a broad orange-coloured sash swathed him round even from under his arms.
The peasant was a very fat man, and he too had chosen a red jacket and loose white trousers, but the latter were confined in a pair of Wellington boots drawn up over them, and to these the wearer had added tops of mock-yellow morocco.
The first race was between the last mentioned and the pony, for the highest prize; and these two first made their appearance, all the horses were ticketed; a colossal number inscribed on a white card which hung below the left ear—these were (1) and (2); the jockeys came forward, and with great dignity and much trouble, placed themselves on a line, after the cart-horse, who was vicious, had backed to kick the pony. Then the word was given, and they leaned back to the tails, pulled with one hand and flogged with the other and started. We had no trouble in following within the circle sufficiently close to see all the interesting events of the race. The pony started a little, and his rider slipped from the saddle to the sand, which was thick enough to prevent injury; during this time the cart-horse gained on him and the peasant won. The prize was 600 francs. I heard a spectator bet 10 francs on the pony previous to his misadventure.
The other races very much resembled this one, the horses at starting crossed each other, and the jockeys rode them against the ropes at the turn of the course; and each time, “when the hurly-burly was done,” military music greeted the victor beneath the tricoloured flag. When it was all over, the three winners, preceded by the band of the horse-artillery, rode in triumph round the course. The self-satisfied air of the peasant as he bowed the whole way the head at the back of which hung the jockey-cap, was the most amusing sight possible. The sun was burning, and the excessive heat, and the fatigue of laughing so much, made us glad to ride home to rest.
The fireworks were splendid, and their effect enhanced by a sky which threatened storm. The troops, ranged along both quays of the Saône, kept up a harmless fire of those brilliant white stars which momentarily lighted up the hills and the city with a lustre of the purity, but more than the brightness, of moonshine. They were answered by other soldiers posted on the height, and at intervals by the cannon from the fort of Fourvières and the town; the country and the old cathedral appeared and vanished by turns through the smoke and in the varying light. On the bridge opposite was a palace of diamonds; it brought to my memory one I saw at Rosny, at a fête given in honour of the young Duke of Bordeaux, it was so like; there was only the change of cypher: and last night the “L.” burned brightly, but the P. went totally out. The bouquet went up almost beneath our windows, and sprang, as it seemed to the clouds, a sheet of fire, each branch as it burst scattering a shower, variously and gorgeously coloured, and illuminating the town, during the few moments it lasted, more perfectly than did the day’s sunshine. The crowd uttered an exclamation of applause. I had no idea, at the time, that the cries of the dying were mingled with it. Twelve persons of the working-class, to see the feu-d’artifice better, went out on the Saône in one of their narrow and dangerous batelets. They made a sudden movement as the bouquet rose, and the boat overturned! Their cries were heard, and attempts to rescue them made, which proved vain in the confusion and partial darkness. Eight contrived to reach the shore—the remaining four went down; they formed an entire family—mother, son, daughter, and the husband, to whom she had been lately married.
3rd May.
As we were standing at the window yesterday morning, the two expected battalions of the 66th regiment passed under it, and D—— ran down stairs to ask news of his friend. As it happened, he accosted a soldier of Capt. de ——’s own company. He is still on leave in Paris, and the man did not know the precise time of his return. This morning we started on an expedition we failed to accomplish; for I wished to see the Isle Barbe, and the quays on this side the Saône which lead thither become very narrow, and are high above the water without curb stone or parapet, and therefore too perilous for Fanny, who full of spirit started round from each individual we met, we took the first narrow road which led up the hill; but, ere we did so, passed the site of a romantic story, whose exact date is unknown to me.
Nearly opposite the diminished rock on which the fortress of Pierre Scise or Encise once stood advanced into the water, there is still a tower, which with the remains of a moat and drawbridge belongs to a house called, from its present owner, “Maison Vouti.” A French nobleman, a native of Lyons, had quitted it to seek his fortunes in Germany, where he became not only rich, but placed and favoured at court.
In the midst of his prosperity he contracted an unfortunate attachment to a low-born maiden, whose grace and beauty did not, in German eyes, excuse her origin. He married her; but, unable to bear the disgrace and contempt which fell upon him, he broke all the ties which attached him to her country, and conveyed her to Lyons, where it was his will to live in almost perfect solitude. The bride pined in her lonely habitation, rendered sadder by the now morose temper of the disappointed noble. She seemed to recover a portion of her former gaiety only during the visits of a young man, her husband’s sole friend and intimate. These visits became by degrees more frequent, and at last excited unpleasant feelings in the husband’s mind. His jealousy once roused, intrigues and false political accusations enclosed his former associate within the fortress walls, while his young wife was conducted to the tower, which still bears the name of “Tour de la Belle Allemande.”
Whether she too felt the love with which she had inspired the prisoner, or whether indignation at her own fate and pity for his only prompted her, the chronicler does not tell; but from the summit of her gaol-tower she constantly looked towards Pierre Encise. At last the day came on which the young man, profiting by a moment in which the usual watchfulness had failed, threw himself from a window, of which he had sawed the bar, into the river. The current of the Saône is not strong, and he was a skilful swimmer, and arrived at the opposite shore in safety. She had watched his progress in hope and agony; uttering cries he could not hear, and making signs of encouragement he failed to see during his strife with the water. At length he was near, approaching to free her, and she repeated her signs; and her husband’s guards, who had watched her strange motions in wonder, now at last discovered their object. As he arrived at the foot of the tower, and stretched forth his arms to her,—as she stooped over the battlement to greet him—he fell—the shot had been faithfully and fatally aimed.
The steep stony road (up which D—— led Grizzle, and little Fanny gaily carried me) led among winding lanes and stone walls to the summit of the hill, and the Croix Rousse, which is the Faubourg of Lyons, exclusively occupied by silk weavers, and the head-quarters of the insurrection. Pauche the landlord said, when we returned, that those who knew the town and its inhabitants better than ourselves would scarcely venture there. We met with no incivility: a few squalid faces looked out in wonder, for the descent to the quay for foot passengers is by flights of twenty or thirty steps each; and between these the horse-road winds, still so steep, that we had some difficulty in leading the horses. As we passed the operatives’ dwellings we agreed that the temptation of seeing their work in progress was not sufficiently strong to lead us within; most were employed with their doors open, to admit as much air as the narrow street and hot day suffered to circulate: that which issued forth was infected; and within, besides the heavy loom and its pale master, there seemed barely room for the few articles of wretched furniture. On the relative position of manufacturer and workman, my informant is Mons. Pauche the landlord, who, besides the revenues of this hôtel, now possesses a landed property worth about 60,000 francs a-year, and whose vineyards yield 300 hogsheads of wine annually. He began life as a workman in the silk trade, so that his two conditions of operative and proprietor are likely to make him impartial. At this moment the purchaser finds silk dear, both in Paris and Lyons; but precisely in the proportion that the head manufacturer’s profits increase, those of the workman decline. The former takes advantage of the latter’s necessities; offers reduced prices, and can afford the delay, if the workman demurs, which the wants of his family prevent his doing long, and, having food to buy and rent to pay, he will accept fifteen or even twelve sous for his long day’s labour. At present, the usual remuneration is twenty-two sous, the wife earns twelve, the children so little that they do not lighten the burthen; but supposing no incumbrances, thirty-four sous, the price of the man and woman’s work, can hardly enable them to exist and pay house-rent, which is dear in Lyons.
The disturbances of November 1831 had in their commencement no reference to politics. The workmen, whose wages were miserably low, demanded an augmentation. Their masters summoned them before the Préfet, and the increase was agreed on in his presence. The day of payment arrived; the manufacturers, in greater part, refused to adhere to their engagements, and the workmen, meeting in groups of four, had in a short time in various parts of the city gathered to the number of many thousands; bearing on their banners the motto, “Vivre en travaillant ou mourir en combattant.”
In the conflict which followed, the 66th, then the only regiment in Lyons, lost two hundred men and thirteen officers. It was almost totally unsupported; as the greater part of the National Guard, taken from the class of which were the insurgents, refused to act against them.
You know that Lyons is famous for its black and crimson dyes; it is strange that this superiority should depend on the waters of the Rhone, all parts of which, as it flows through Lyons, have not a similar effect. In one place, for instance, the black dye attains its perfection; a hundred yards further it fails. The workmen attribute this to peculiar properties of springs in the bed of the river.
The most ancient monastery in this, probably in any part of Gaul, was that of the Isle Barbe, built in the time of the Emperor Constantine, about the year 300; its first inhabitants were a few fugitive Christians, who had fled thence from Lyons, and from the troops of the Emperor Severus.
The church of Aisnay, which we passed on our ride from the Place Bellecour to La Perrache, is built on the foundations of the temple raised by the sixty tribes of Gaul. That which exists, of partly Gothic partly Roman architecture, is such as it was repaired in the eleventh century, after the ravages of the Saracens. Long before, Queen Brunehaud had ceded to the monks, who possessed a small hermitage near, the ruins of the edifice dedicated “to Rome and to Augustus,” on which they built a magnificent church; but this, as I said, was pillaged and destroyed in part by the barbarians. The four massive granite columns which sustain the roof are, however, believed to have belonged to the Roman temple.
CHAPTER VI.
Heights of Fourvières—Difficult Descent—Trade in Relics—Our Lady of Fourvières—Saving Lyons from Cholera—Lunatic patients—Dungeon where the first Christian Bishop was murdered—Roman Ruins—The Christians’ early Place of Assembly—St. Irénée—A Coffin—Subterranean Chapels—Bones of the Nine Thousand—The Headsman’s Block, and the Murmur from the Well—Bleeding to Death—Marguerite Labarge—Her Abode for Nine Years—Her Return to upper Air Cause of her Death—Her Family rich Residents in Lyons—Mode of saving the Soul—Body dispensed with—The Pope’s Bull good for ever—A Friend’s Arrival—Jardin des Plantes—Riots of November, 1831—The Préfet’s Mistake—Capt. de——.—Defence of the Arsenal with Unloaded Cannon—The Murdered Chef de Bataillon—His Assassin’s Death—The Grief of his Opponents—Their usual Cruelty and their wild Justice—Their eight days’ occupation of Lyons—Capt. de ——’s defence of Arsenal—Bearer of Proclamation—Danger—Saved by a former Comrade—Interview—Threats—Empty Cannon effective—Invitation to Dinner—Retreat—The Hôtel de l’Europe closed against its Master by a National Guard—Three Hundred killed in St. Nizier—The Cathedral—Second Council General—Jaw of St. John—The Ivory Horn of Roland—Privilege of the Seigneur of Mont d’Or—The first Villeroy Archbishop—Refusal to accept him by the Counts of Lyons—His Text and the Dean’s Reply—Lyons Refuge for the Pazzi—Their Monument destroyed in anger by Marie de Médicis—The last Prince of Dauphiné becoming Prior of the Jacobin Convention, Paris—Procession in St. Nizier—Chapel of Ste. Philomène—Place des Terreaux.
The news of the disturbances in Paris has set all Lyons in a ferment.
18th May.
The weather has been burning. We attempted riding by the steep streets to the summit of Fourvières; but having accomplished half the ascent, it became so rapid, and the sharp pavement so slippery, that we were obliged to dismount and lead the horses under the walls of the Antiquaille, and up a road which is rather like a stair to the church. Not willing to confide our companions to the tender mercies of the mischievous boys, who as usual flocked round us, we led them within the court which surrounds Notre Dame, and up to the low terrace wall. Grizzle, with her ready appetite, devoured the few weeds and moss which grew among the stones; and Fanny looked as attentively at the view, as if she were considering her distance from the inn which was in sight, and the difficulty of getting back again. The hill is here almost perpendicular. The streets we had taken to attain the height, abrupt as they seem, are zigzags cut in the side of the mountain; and the city, with its two rivers, spread like a map below our giddy elevation. The air was particularly clear, except over the Alps, where a haze has provokingly hung ever since our arrival. We could read “Hôtel de l’Europe” distinctly on the front of the inn on the opposite side of the Saône; the Place Bellecour was just behind it, its equestrian statue looking at this distance like a toy; then the broad Rhone, the faubourg, with its gardens and promenades, and the Grande Route we are to travel towards the mountains, a white line crossing bare hills, which seem uninteresting and interminable. A little to our right was the Pont d’Aisnay, traversing the Saône to the arsenal, a low insignificant looking building. Farther, in the same direction, the race-ground of Perrache was visible. About the year 1808 the people of Lyons presented this land to Napoleon, and he accepted it as the site of an Imperial palace! Still beyond we could distinguish the junction of the Rhone and the Saône, no longer in precisely the same spot as when Hannibal crossed the Rhone at the head of his army, where the currents met at Aisnay.
The view to the left is less extensive; the jutting ground of Fourvières in some degree narrows it; but it is fine notwithstanding, and the Jardin des Plantes, green and blossoming as it is now, appears to advantage on the steep side of the opposite hill among the confusion of houses and church towers. It was impossible to return by the same road, and none of the stupid inhabitants of the hovels about us could point out another. Merely knowing the direction, we found our way among hot lanes, between stone walls, till, after an hour’s windings, we issued from them opposite the pretty churchyard of St. Just. A labouring man, answering our question, said, “There was a road that way, certainly, but a very bad one for horses, as it was yet only partly paved.” I should have thought no one knowing the pavement of Lyons would have considered it an advantage. Taking that way, though he strongly advised returning as we came, we passed below the extensive fort, in the completion of which numbers are still employed, and a few minutes brought us on the magnificent road, cut for the sole purpose of making an easy communication between it and the town, (it winds in broad zigzags, the whole way commanding a splendid view,) and arrived at the quay, beneath Pierre Encise. This new work has also contributed to diminish the rock; from the river it must have been a striking object, when the hundred and twenty steps cut in its stone led up to the fortress crowned with a large round tower, whose proportions were of such perfect symmetry.
We returned on foot to Fourvières this morning; on either side of the narrow lane which leads directly to the church are standings without number, covered with what seems on this hill the chief staple of trade,—I mean chaplets, crowns, and bouquets of dyed artificial flowers; coloured prints, framed and glazed, of saints in various attitudes; little waxen heads, legs, and arms, or whole figures; votive offerings, which the faithful present at the shrine of their patron saint, and find here ready at the church door.
The church is kept locked, and we merely read again the inscription above its entrance, which gratefully thanks our Lady of Fourvières, who saved Lyons from cholera. We went up the square tower, D—— to the top, I to the first floor half way, from whose windows the prospect is perhaps as agreeable. The guide pointed to the Antiquaille, directly beneath one of them; it contains, as I told you, an hospital and penitentiary, and also an asylum for lunatics; we could distinguish two of these in the court-yard belonging to the end of the building facing us; one was leaping with all his force against the rails, uttering howls rather like an animal than a human being; we heard him distinctly; the other close by, and quite undisturbed, was on his knees praying, and had been there immoveable (the man said) for the last two hours. The more tractable are allowed to walk with their keepers in the fine gardens adjoining. It is said that the dungeon beneath the Antiquaille remains unchanged, as in the time when St. Pothin, first Bishop of Lyons, was tortured and murdered there; they pretend to show the very fetters he wore.
From this same window, which looks south, you can also distinguish the remains of a Roman amphitheatre, and the commencement of a Roman aqueduct, whose vestiges can be traced three leagues further. Still on the brow of the hill is the square tower of the church of St. Irénée, built over the subterranean chapels where the Christians assembled in the early days of persecution. We left the observatory to go thither, passing on our way four or five broken arches of the aqueduct constructed by the army of Julius Cæsar, whose massiveness in ruin puts the perfection of modern buildings to shame. What I thought a long walk, with innumerable windings, and here and there a beautiful glimpse back to the hills of Burgundy, brought us to the dirty faubourg, where, with some trouble, we found the church. A long flight of steps leads to a rather uninteresting modern building; on either side of the choir are two highly ornamented chapels, one having a finely painted window; and between the choir and the chapels are appended to the wall, framed and glazed, on one side a list of “Indulgences,” annexed to St. Irénée; on the other a bull of his Holiness Pius the Seventh. I thought the latter worth copying; but in the nave there was a coffin, covered with its pall and surrounded by high candlesticks, the black banner with its silver scull and cross bones attached to each. It certainly was a melancholy companion, and D—’s imagination representing to him that the inmate had perhaps died of some contagious malady, he hurried me out. A side door and a narrow flight of steps led to a court at the back of the church, at the extremity of which, and the very edge of the hill, commanding here the most glorious view of Lyons I have yet seen, is the Calvary, on a raised platform, inclosed by a railing. Steps led up to it, (as do others to the vaults below, in which is a representation of the Holy Sepulchre;) the Saviour on the cross, the thieves on either side, the Virgin standing in an attitude of despair, and the Magdalen kneeling at its foot, are large as life, and finely sculptured; and of all the similar groups I have seen, this certainly is most impressive, perhaps from its position, looking down on a world, with the blue sky for a background. Round the court are the stations, each a small covered altar, a basso relievo in white marble affixed to each, representing a scene of the Passion. The little dwelling of the Concierge is close by, and he came to unlock the gate at the top of the stair which leads to the subterranean chapels. They are beneath the church, opposite the Calvary. The light of day penetrates so faintly, that descending these steps it was difficult to distinguish what objects we saw piled behind a grated window on the right hand; it is a mass of human bones, filling a room of considerable size, those of the nine thousand massacred in the year 203, with their bishop, St. Irénée, the greater part in these chapels.
Turning to the left, we entered the first and most ancient; a small vaulted chamber, on whose bare walls are inscriptions copied from the writings of the saints, and the Pagan accusations brought against them. One of these sentences asserts, that St. Polycarpe preached here at the age of eighty-six years. The chapel beyond was constructed a century later; it has an arched roof, supported by ten heavy columns. A few steps lead up to the altar built over St. Irénée’s tomb, who, it is said, was recognised after the massacre. There is a massive stone bench fixed against the wall on either side, and in the centre of the floor a well of extraordinary depth. Tradition tells that these stones served for headsman’s blocks to the assassins, and that down the well so many bodies were thrown as to gorge it to its mouth. Some good Catholics believe that, stooping the ear to the floor, a gushing sound is sometimes heard, like that of bubbling blood. I confess I could hear nothing; but the gloom of the spot is well fitted to such terrible tales, though it is now in some degree dispelled by the construction of a new chapel below the new church, extending behind St. Irénée’s tomb, with bright ornaments and painted windows, having no associations of its own, and robbing of their solemnity places indeed consecrated by the blood of men who died for their faith there.
Beyond this chapel is another small chamber, of the same date as itself; a recess contains a hollow stone. The caprice of the assassins bled to death many of the martyrs, and their blood cast out here found an issue in the streets of the faubourg. A broad stone in the centre of the floor marks the tomb of one Marguerite Labarge, who died about 1692. There is a door in this room, opposite to that opening on the chapel; and mounting a few steps, and climbing over rubbish in the obscurity, we distinguished with some difficulty an aperture to which our guide pointed, large enough for a human being to creep through, and concealed at will by a door of stone, which when he closed I could not distinguish from those which surrounded it. Within there is sufficient height for a person to stand, and space to lie down. Her bed was a stone likewise; I did not see it, (though it remains as in her time,) for not a ray of light penetrates; she lived here nine years, having determined on self-sacrifice at the age of thirty-six. It is presumed that at night she left her den to walk in the adjoining chapels, and sought there what food had been left in charity by such as revered her for her unfortunate fanaticism; but her means of subsistence were never exactly known. When nine years had passed, a popular commotion taking place forced her to leave her cell. She appeared again among the living, and, strange to say, among the sane; but, her constitution having long resisted the want of air and necessaries, the returning to their enjoyment seemed a worse shock, and shortly after she died. Her family was then in straitened circumstances; some of its descendants (become rich) are still residents in Lyons.
The Concierge laid great stress on the “Indulgences” annexed to St. Irénée; and twice told me that any Catholic having died in “état de grâce” for whom a mass should be said before its high altar, would be immediately transferred from purgatory to Paradise. His information reminding me of the coffin in the church. I asked him “who it contained?” he answered “nobody.” A mass for the soul of a deceased priest was performed the night before, and, knowing it was therefore among those of the blest, he had shown some laziness in matters of less moment, and failed to remove the pomp and circumstance. I returned to copy the pope’s bull:—
Bref de notre très Saint Père le Pape Pie
VII., pour la perpétuelle mémoire.
“Paternellement attentif au salut de tous les hommes, nous enrichissons quelquefois du trésor spirituel des Indulgences des lieux sacrés; pour faire jouir les âmes des fidèles décédés des mérites de Notre Seigneur Jésus-Christ, et des suffrages des saints, qui leur étant appliqués peuvent, par la miséricorde de Dieu, les faire passer des peines du Purgatoire au bonheur éternel. Voulant donc honorer par un don particulier l’eglise paroissiale sous le vocable de St. Irénée, située sur la montagne de ce nom, appelée le Calvaire, hors et près les murs de la Ville de Lyon; par l’autorité que le Seigneur nous a donné, et pleine de confiance en la miséricorde de Dieu tout puissant, en l’autorité de ses bienheureux apôtres Pierre et Paul, nous voulons que toutes les fois qu’un prêtre séculier ou régulier de quelque ordre, congrégation, ou institut qu’il soit, célébrera au dit autel une messe de mort pour l’âme d’un fidèle quelconque décédé en état de grâce, cette même âme obtienne par voie de suffrage l’Indulgence tirée du trésor de l’Eglise, et qu’elle soit délivrée des peines du Purgatoire par les mérites de Notre Seigneur Jésus-Christ, de la bienheureuse Vierge Marie, et de tous les Saints.
Malgré tous les Réglemens contraires, les présentes vaudront à perpétuité.
Donné à Rome à St. Pierre, sous l’anneau du Pêcheur, le 13 jour de Décembre, 1816; la 17eme année de notre Pontificat.”
Pour le Cardinal Braschio de Nonestis,
G. Bernius, Sous Secrétaire.
Avons vu et permettons de mettre à exécution, et en vertu du présent Bref voulons que le Grand Autel de l’Eglise de St. Irénée sur la montagne jouisse du privilége.
Lyon, Juin 23, 1817.
(Signé) Courbon, Vicaire Général.
19th May.
We were sitting at home owing to the heat of the day, when the door opened suddenly and our friend entered. He was just arrived from Paris, and had found D——’s letter at the barracks, and came to seek us instantly; we were all glad to meet again, for it had been likely that we should never do so, as before Captain de —— went with his regiment to occupy Ancona, from whence they are just returned, he passed four years and a half of constant fighting in Africa. For the sake of talking over old times, D—— has determined on remaining till the 30th: Captain de —— gave us last night some interesting details respecting the riots which took place in Lyons in the year 1831; we walked to the Jardin des Plantes, which from its situation, rather than its size, is extremely beautiful. It occupies the side of the hill, and two long flights of broad steps lead to the entrance gates; from the nature of the ground, the garden is made in terraces, and shaded but very steep walks lead from one to the other. In the artificial flat made in its centre there is a basin, and in the basin a fine swan. D—— and myself commented sometime on the apparent want of harmony subsisting between him and his companion, before the latter issuing from the water we discovered by the colour of his legs that he was—a goose! The broad terrace at the summit commands the town below. Fourvières, now on the right, and the other shore, Mont Pilatre in the distance, and the Alps on the left, seen distinctly though delicately through the green branches of exotics and trees just in leaf and blossom.
Entering the gardens, the Rue de la Grande Côte is on the left, bounding that side, for the workmen’s wretched rooms look down on it. The street is continued far above and beyond, and issues on the Place des Bernardines: it is so steep that a charge of cavalry having been commanded, was found impossible, at least farther than a side-gate of the jardin, where many of the horses fell from exhaustion and some died. How artillery could be dragged, as it afterwards was, to the top, it is difficult to imagine. On the Place des Bernardines, since 1831, has been built a fortified barrack, thus separating at will Lyons from the Croix Rousse, which is on the other side of the Barrière: at the time of the riots no such separation existed. The Place des Bernardines had been occupied by military from the first moment in which tumult was expected, but evacuated by the préfet’s order, who appears to have been strangely mistaken as to the state of the town. Our friend Captain de —— was ordered to the Hôtel de Ville with his company about three in the morning; the Hôtel de Ville looks on the Place des Terreaux, and is at no great distance from the Jardin des Plantes on the town side.
Having lost some of his men, he commanded hardly more than seventy soldiers, when he joined his colonel there.
The general and the préfet had their rendezvous at the Hôtel de Ville, and, important as their meeting was, it seemed difficult that it should take place, for the Place des Terreaux had gradually become thronged; the people having commenced collecting at daylight, continued to pour in from every issue, and more and more menacing every moment, prevented the bataillon beyond from joining its comrades. Aware of the danger of approaching the Hôtel de Ville, the colonel’s anxiety increased.
“What will you give me to clear the place?” asked Capt. de ——. “What do you demand?” exclaimed the colonel. “Five minutes.”
At this time there were present certainly ten thousand, but unarmed to all appearance, and as yet undecided as to their future movements. “Use the butt-ends of your muskets,” said Capt. de ——; “knock down as many as you can and pass over.” The knot of men obeyed, following himself and his example as he headed them, distributing blows with the flat of his sabre. The crowd opened and retreated, astonished and hardly aware of its own strength, and bore backwards towards the steep streets and the Croix Rousse: and the bataillon which had been unable to pass moved across the Place des Terreaux. At this juncture it was first recollected that the arsenal was without protection, and left to the mercy of the mob; it had been forgotten. “Capt. ——,” said the general, “conduct your company there immediately; if it is occupied by the workmen, retake it; if it is still free, occupy and defend it.”
Capt. de —— marched his few men to the arsenal along the quays, and through multitudes who covered them, not without difficulty, and arrived in time. The Pont d’Aisnay is exactly opposite the arsenal, and the mob, well armed, occupied the other side of the Saône, and had raised a barricade at that end of the bridge: it was necessary that the insurgents should remain ignorant of the weakness of the force which was to oppose them. A piece of cannon, by Capt. de ——’s order pointed on their barricade, in some degree served to hold them in awe, though they kept up a pretty constant fire: they had no means of knowing that the piece was unloaded, and the few artillerymen of National Guard, who had joined the soldiers, were unable to manœuvre it.
During this time it had been necessary to dislodge the rioters from the position they occupied in the Rue de la Grande Côte, and others leading to the Croix Rousse; and here many fell, fired on from the houses, all which the mob occupied. A man deeply regretted was the Chef de Bataillon Martines, who received a ball in his chest, in the upper part of the Rue de la Grande Côte, where an advancing house forms an angle. As he fell from his horse the soldiers stopped vowing vengeance, but saw none on whom to exercise it. The light smoke which followed the discharge issuing from the wall of the entresol floor betrayed the murderer, and some of the men of Martines’ company rushed into the house. The assassin had bored a slit in the wall, and when the soldiers caught sight of him was quietly and safely reloading. Seeing them, and expecting no mercy, rather than wait their approach, he rushed up stairs into a room on the third floor, and, as the soldiers who had followed reached the door, flung himself out on the pavement. The fall did not put an end to his existence; he was able to rise and crawl on a few paces. It was not likely he would meet pity from men whose beloved officer he had killed: they finished him with their bayonets. The fire had by this time become unceasing, and poor De Martines, who had died instantly, was necessarily left by the regiment where he fell. After its passage the corpse was discovered on the pavement by a party of the insurgents: he must have been a good and amiable man, for by some of these he was recognised and deplored deeply as by his own soldiers. They raised his body and carried it to a church, where they obliged a priest to perform the mass for the dead; and thence, bearing it to the burying ground, interred it with military honours, themselves firing a volley over his grave,—these very men, and at that very time, were towards their opponents in general guilty of the most atrocious cruelties, torturing and drowning the wounded.
As an instance of the prevailing feeling, I may mention that a young man had been disabled by a shot in the leg, which had however caused no dangerous injury. He was found stretched on the pavement by a woman, whose pity he bespoke, hoping she did not belong to the furies he had seen maltreating his companions: wanting a weapon, she murdered him with blows of her sabot! Still, infuriated and merciless as they were, they in some things exhibited a feeling of wild justice: before the doors of such manufacturers as had kept faith with them, they placed sentinels, and lives and property were respected. Such as, on the contrary, had broken through the agreement made, they pillaged without remorse. Mr. Pauche has told me, that he saw in the streets piles of silks and velvets burning. Several workmen, who attempted to carry away plunder, were shot; and the owners, sought after with as much perseverance as rage, barely escaped with their lives; concealing themselves in cellars, where they remained in disguise and half-starved, afraid to show themselves during the eight days the workmen held possession of the town.
As I said, Capt. de —— had entered in time, and held the arsenal. The third day the chef de bataillon, his superior officer, arrived: he brought a proclamation, addressed to the insurgents by the préfet and the general.
“Capt. de ——,” he said, “you must find among your men some one who will be bearer of this, it may put a stop to the riots.”
Our friend turned to his company:—
“Is there one among you,” he said, “who, not in obedience to my order, as I do not command it, but of his own free-will, will take charge of this paper?” The soldiers did not answer; he repeated his question, and they remained silent.