CHAPTER VII.
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 de 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.
The evening promenade of the fashionables of Lyons is under the trees of the Place Bellecour, and capricious as fashion is called, she was enthroned here three centuries ago. Louise Labé was a native of Lyons; from her childhood remarkable for genius and personal attractions; at fifteen, a fearless, vain, beautiful girl. Her father’s pride bestowed on her an education beyond her sex and century, and an imagination unchilled as her temper was unrestrained by control, joined to the consciousness of her own superiority, induced her, from this early age, to seek to rise above her sex, and laugh at all the barriers which custom had raised between it and glory. Her hours of recreation, from Greek, Latin, Italian, and Spanish studies, she passed in attaining perfection in all military exercises, and the command of the most fiery horse. At the age of sixteen, and during the campaign of 1542, she appeared at the army. The Dauphin commanded the siege of Perpignan, and Louise disdained to treat fatigues or dangers as obstacles when distinction was before her. Her dauntless courage soon made her known by the name of Capitaine Loys. After the siege, abandoning the profession of arms with the same caprice which led her to adopt it, she returned to Lyons, to cultivate letters with more enthusiasm than before; for with her all tastes were passions.
Many sought her hand; it was said she had given her heart while at the army to a young officer of family, but no fortune. She, notwithstanding, on her return, accepted a rich rope merchant, named Perrin, whose riches might afford fresh means of celebrity. In her spacious gardens, near the Place Bellecour, crowds assembled to see her; men of learning, poets, and artists. The subjects of their meetings were science, poetry, and the fine arts, of all which she seemed the beautiful genius by turns; and a knowledge of music and a fine voice were added to these gifts of a higher order, like the wand to the enchantress.
Among those who sought her society was her friend, Clémence de Bourges. Much younger than Louise; of not inferior, though a different style of beauty, of equal genius, timid as was its possessor. To her Louise Labé dedicated a volume of poems, and became in turn confidante of her most secret thoughts. The one was the observed of all observers, a sun round which worlds might revolve; the other, with all her talent and loveliness, was a mild, soft-hearted woman, content to single forth “a bright particular star,” and make it that of her destiny. She was betrothed to the object of her first love, a young officer, of the name of Jean Dupeyrat, whose profession often absented him from Lyons; and during these absences it became the habit of Clemence to pass much of her time with Louise in discourse of her lover, sometimes showing to her in confidence the sweet verses her affection addressed to him. At last the officer returned; Louise’s curiosity was excited, and Clemence was proud and happy to make him known to her. Woman’s vanity prevailed over woman’s friendship. She tried the powers of her fascination, and Dupeyrat was dazzled by the wit which shone from heartlessness, and Clemence was too deeply interested to struggle long, for her hand was paralyzed by feeling her life staked on the throw. Next she was neglected;—the friends parted, and then she was alone; and while Dupeyrat was following the footsteps and listening to the magic voice of her brilliant rival, adding one more to her court, young Clemence pined and grew pale in her solitude, but lived on still, for hope had not quite deserted her. At last Dupeyrat left Lyons to join his comrades at the siege of Beaurepaire, and while Clemence trusted that absence might bring back thoughts of other times, she received news of his death; he had been killed during the storm. She did not survive him long, and was borne to her grave with her fair young face uncovered, and her head crowned with white flowers, and followed to it by the regret of all Lyons.
Louise Labé, not formed of the “porcelain of human clay,” inherited the fortune of her deceased husband, and died about forty years of age. From the most celebrated of her works, a kind of drama, entitled “Love and Madness,” Lafontaine took the plot of one of his fables. After her decease, her house was taken down, and a street occupies its place. It is still called after her, “Rue de la belle Cordière.”
27th May.
We are to leave the day after to-morrow, and our friend spent last evening with us. He told us a story, which, though it certainly has nothing to do with Lyons, I cannot forbear telling you, who have no chance of hearing it from himself. You know that since we saw him he has passed four years and a half in Africa, fighting against Abd-el-Kader. In Capt. de ——’s regiment there was a cantinière, not handsome, but a very stout, robust woman of about thirty, with a powerful arm, and sufficiently red face not to belie her calling. In an engagement which took place between the French and Arabs, our friend, Capt. de ——, was at no great distance from the poor woman when she was taken prisoner. He was with his men too fully occupied to be able to assist her, and spite of her screams and struggles she was borne off to Abd-el-Kader. When he saw her, he thought of his ally, the Emperor of Morocco, who is a great admirer of fat women, and Abd-el-Kader exclaimed, “C’est mon affaire,” and commanded that the captive should be with due care and attention conveyed to his imperial Majesty, and offered him as a present. The cantinière was placed on a camel, and transported to the Emperor of Morocco.
Arrived at her destination, the emperor, struck with her appearance, fell in love, but ere she could be placed among the ladies of his harem, it was necessary that she should change her religion, and here her royal master failed. She swore at him;—either he did not understand, or the interpreter thought translation unnecessary, or love was deaf as he is sometimes blind; for the emperor essayed all means of conversion, and having loaded her with presents in vain, tried the power of threats.
During this time her husband, who was a soldier in the regiment, was inconsolable, and in spite of many of his comrades, who laughed at him, obtained leave and set off for Toulon, to the consul, who in consequence made application for the liberty of the captive cantinière. The emperor had become greatly embarrassed; for having threatened to cut off her head, she said he might if he would, but he could not make her an apostate. He gave her slaves to attend her: she beat them vehemently; to his gentleness she replied by oaths. Fresh from the 66th, it was useless to beseech her to be a sultana, she chose to be a cantinière; so that when the demand for her freedom arrived, he was rather glad to be rid of her. The poor woman, rewarded for her courage and constancy, rejoined her husband. Capt. de —— said, that if he would have taken her back to Oran, all the officers there had become so interested in her fate, that a large subscription would probably have been raised; but her husband preferred remaining in France; he feared his rival, the Emperor of Morocco.
We have staid here long enough to become accustomed to the place and people, and I am sorry to go away. The landlord’s pretty daughter is an accomplished singer, and her good old aunts tell me stories in the hot evenings on the terrace. The fat civil waiter, Ambrose, is a Savoyard, and was a private in the regiment of Savoy at the time when the present King of Sardinia, then Prince of Carignan, conspired against the last monarch, his uncle; and when all the Sardinian troops went over to the Prince, the Savoyard regiment disbanded itself and the men returned to their mountains. I have even made acquaintance with the young pet donkey, who follows round the yard for the bits of bread which first won his good graces. The mention of pets reminds me of an anecdote, for whose truth I will not vouch, but which I repeat, as it made me laugh. The Marquis of H——, who passes through Lyons once a year on his way from England to Italy, has several dogs of a large strong breed, favourites to the degree that they always occupied cushions in the carriage, till medical advice, in consequence of their loss of health, obliged them sometimes to run behind. Mortal enemies to cats, I was rather surprised, when desired to guess how many they had destroyed on their way from Rome, to hear a thousand francs’ worth, “pour mille francs de chats.” Most cat proprietors placed the lame or infirm in the way of his lordship’s dogs, and set their own value on them after the massacre. It, however, once happened, that an ancient landlady thus lost a large Angola, an old friend of the family, and, in her wrath and sorrow, for the Marquis of H——’s dinner she served up its mangled remains before him in a basket.
29th May.
Left Lyons this morning; our trunks sent on as before, and our only baggage contained in the valise Grizzle carries, leaving behind us, as we crossed the Pont de la Guillotière, the splendid Hôtel Dieu, and the green avenues which edge the rapid river. The bridge is the longest in France (excepting that of the St. Esprit, over the Rhone also); its length is two hundred and sixty toises. There existed one at this spot in the time of Philip Augustus, King of France, but it was not then of stone, and when the French king departed from Lyons for the Holy Land, in company of Richard Cœur de Lion, it gave way beneath the numbers who formed their suite, and many were drowned. The widening of the Pont de la Guillotière, which has heretofore been dangerously narrow, is now in progress, and the usual carelessness of the French, and their confidence in their quiet horses, leaves for the present a great part in its original narrowness, but the parapets taken down. We luckily dismounted as we reached this part, for a man pulling a cart entangled his wheel in that of a heavy waggon, and as the horses were backed to disengage him, and the assistants swore and pulled with all their might, we expected to see them go over. As to Fanny, she started so violently that I feared being obliged to let go the rein.
However we passed in safety. Burning weather as we rode through the faubourg, and ascended the long hill, whence the view back to Lyons, the Rhone’s windings, and the mountain of Fourvières, is very beautiful. The square tower of the latter we distinguished for miles, diminishing by degrees, seen through vistas of poplars with which the broad road (the best we have yet travelled) is often shaded. We lost this prospect as we descended, but the Alps were visible, and Mont Blanc, a little to the left, towering above them.
As we had quitted Lyons late, and loitered during the heat of the day in the shade, it was evening when we approached La Verpilière. The deep red clover is in blossom, and the haymaking has begun; and the dew falling heavily, the breeze which sprung up brought with it a fresh sweet smell. The near hills had become bolder and wooded, and a ruined castle crowned one to the right. I asked to whom it belonged, when we stopped to water the horses at a stone reservoir by the road side. The peasant only knew that its name was Vavilliers, and it was not furnished or inhabited, which is not extraordinary, as there only remain a hollow tower and outer wall. The human race here improves as much as the country, but the villages are still the same. This one at a distance looked deceitfully well, having neat houses at its entrance among clumps of chestnut trees, and I hoped the Chapeau Rouge might prove one of them; but the street twisted and narrowed into an abominable alley with its vile variety of odours, and there was the inn. The landlady’s doze was disturbed as we rode into her yard, and she came forth ungracious and scarce awake. The garçon d’écurie was at work in the fields, and her husband she said was by trade a fiddler, and as he was ill, moreover, there was little chance of his help, and D—— led the horses into the barn, while I followed the hostess across the yard and unpromising kitchen, and into the street, and then up a stone staircase, like a ladder, to the bedroom door. Over the bricks, unwashed and unrubbed, I picked my steps as if in the street, and I hesitated ere I laid my gloves on the three-legged table. There was a velvet chair which I avoided, and a wooden one, and beds with dark red curtains so thick with dust and generations of spiders, that I feared to desire they should be disturbed; she opened the window to show me complacently that it faced the street, preferring the peep down into its gutter, or opposite into the garret, to the plains and mountains. There were no jugs or basons, and I asked for them; she at first looked embarrassed, and then, as if a sudden thought had struck her, said “Ah!” and desired me to follow, which I did with resignation, once more into the street, and arrived in the kitchen, where, having ejected some kitchen-stuff from a pan of green earthenware, she said triumphantly “voilà!” and wondered when I declined, as it was more “commode” she observed; but finding me obstinate, went to the crockery-shop to borrow the articles required, which her hotel did not possess.
The next difficulty was dinner; she made a favour of serving it at the usual prices, and then I found there was nothing to eat. “Soup?” she would be very happy if it were Sunday, but malheureusement, it was their only day for the pot au feu “à rôti:” there was a “restant” of veal, she said, and truly it proved a picked bone rebrowned; a fresh salad was provided, and a chicken which could scarcely have been fledged, basted with bad oil; yet she was so certain we were satisfied, it would have been a pity to complain. She paraded before us her sick husband in his black cap and six pretty dirty children, and fearing we might be dull alone invited us to the kitchen for the sake of their company. We found that politics have some trouble in penetrating hither, for D—— happened to mention the disturbances in Paris of the 12th of this month, and she asked with great curiosity to what he referred, not having heard of them before.
We went to bed on mattresses resembling ploughed fields with their clods unharrowed, and this morning, when the horses were brought out uncleaned and uncombed, she desired we would remember her house and stop here on our way back. I sincerely hope I may never see her face again; we intended to-day (the 30th) going only as far as Latour du Pin, but the road was so good, shaded by fine walnut trees, and particularly after Bourgoin, two posts from our Chapeau Rouge, winding through so sweet a country, the day cooled by clouds and soft showers, that in enjoyment of them and fear of the inn, we determined on riding on. Met a load of turf, and a barefooted girl carrying her shoes—a memento of Ireland.
At Bourgoin the Grande Route turns, and the mountains rise straight before; a valley to the right, watered by a narrow river, bordered by trees, and winding through waving corn and most flowery meadows, which stretch themselves at the foot of wooded hills dotted with habitations, which at first reminded me of those near Ryde, in the Isle of Wight, but grow bolder. The rising ground on the left was planted with vines, and tiny clear streams shine along the hedge-rows, for there are hedge-rows here full of elder blossom and wild thyme.
The villages are no longer crowded pest-houses, for the cottages are mostly detached, each with its neat garden; and the peasants themselves are a handsomer and happier looking race. We generally saw the women as we passed assembled under the old trees, with distaff and spinning-wheel, and the children herding the few sheep at the road side, and neglecting them to run after us, and laugh at the strange sight. There was one girl of about seventeen, standing at her door in the large straw hat worn here, who, with her Italian eyes and Grecian features, was perfectly lovely.
At an auberge outside the Tour du Pin we stopped to feed the horses and eat an omelette. I declined the solitary little room wherein the pretty girl was raising clouds of dust to prepare it for us, and chose the more airy kitchen, where while I waited I might observe their attention to affairs spiritual and temporal. The temporal appeared first in order, in the print hung at the door, of a cock with extended wings, perched on a dial plate which marked five minutes to twelve, the verse below warning pennyless travellers:
“Quand ce coq chantera,
Crédit l’on donnera;
Mauvais payeur tu auras crédit,
Quand l’aiguille marquera midi.”
The other print, (the spiritual,) pinned above the snow-white pillow of the bed in the corner, exhibited a large eye, inscribed, “Dieu voit tout;” a great ear, “Dieu entend tout;” a man spurning a beggar, “un moment;” the same man seized by devils, “l’Éternité;” I suppose this exhortation to charity does not apply to wayfarers.
All the fine corn and promising vines we have passed on our road, will be unproductive this year, in consequence of the hail storms which visited the country during our stay at Lyons. The ear has been beaten empty, and the bunches of grapes broken; the season’s loss in this department is computed at three millions of francs, and the peasants are planting potatoes, it being too late for any other seed. The town of La Tour du Pin is of course as disagreeable near, as picturesque at a distance, but the remainder of our road was so lovely, that we many times found ourselves exclaiming at its contrast with the gloomy flats and hills of the Isle de France and Burgundy; for here we had the chain of mountains, range above range, which the snow topped and the clouds sailed before, and where their view first opened on us, a foreground of fertile valleys, covered with cottages and clumps of old chestnut trees, the abrupt bank on our right, crowned with and shaded by them, while on the left, where they border the road also, they form with their fresh green branches a fitting frame for the prospect; it would be a pity to travel this road otherwise than on horseback, on a sunny spring evening.
Recommended by M. Pauche to the Hôtel de la Poste, at Pont du Beauvoisin, we made our way thither through crooked streets innumerable. All the front rooms were already taken. I warn you against the No. 1 on the ground floor, at the end of a long passage, with one small barred window, looking into the narrow yard where the post horses are cleaned, for it fell to our lot. Having been told that the landlady was exorbitant in her demands, I rang for her, specified what we wanted, and asked her charges. No answer, but a promenade round me with candle in hand, as it was dark when we arrived. I repeated the question when I thought the inspection over.
“You have had no disputes on the road, have you,” said Madame, taking hold of the skirt of my habit and shaking it, to ascertain its weight.
“None.”
“Very well, then you won’t dispute with me; where are you going?”
“To Chambéry.”
“Is your husband your age?” This time raising her flambeau under the rim of my hat, so as to blind me.
“He is some years older.”
“How many?” asked the indefatigable landlady.
“I can’t tell exactly at this moment,” I said, getting tired, as I never before saw so much curiosity lodged in one fat human being.
“Not tell; you must know his age; is he thirty, thirty-five, thirty-eight; where is he?”
“In the stable, and I dare say ready for dinner.”
The hint took her to the door, but I unhappily undid the valise, and she rushed back to the table and asked what was in it. I answered rather impatiently, that she had better wait while I unpacked it, so she took me at my word, and when it was quite empty said, “bien,” and went away. The air was insupportable; but for this there would have been little to complain of, for the people are civil,—the landlady’s inquisitiveness, perhaps, excepted,—and the cooking excellent. I imagine the unusual light dinner they served us might be accounted for, by our arriving so late; we commenced dining to the sound of a sweet chime, which was the Angelus ringing in Savoy. To sleep was out of the question; for as I told you, the post stables were on a level with us, and over our heads was lodged a commis voyageur, who started at daybreak. D—— saw his saddle and portmanteaux, weighing altogether three hundred pounds! The landlord strove hard to induce us to stay; we are driven out to breathe. Madame, who peeped into my room before I was up this morning, came to inquire, “whether I kept a regular note of expenses along the road, as everybody ought.” Monsieur praised the excursions within the reach of horse travellers; but the inn stable, large and handsome as it is, is choked at its entrance by heaps of rotting manure, and into it is emptied all the kitchen refuse. I mounted Fanny in a hurry, for close to me in the yard were two enormous tubs of water, into which a man was emptying (there to take their breakfast) bags full of leeches, which arrived last night en poste! I should think no other animal would feel an appetite here.
Away we went to the frontier. The tiny bridge, with the French sentinel on one side and the Savoy soldier opposite, seems a strange division of countries to those used to sea and sickness. Here were formalities to go through on account of the horses. D—— received back the fifty-five francs paid at Calais, and deposited seventeen francs duty on entering Savoy. There is a lovely glimpse from the bridge of the Guier, gurgling along the bottom of its ravine. We were detained some time at the Savoy douane, though they were not at all troublesome, but the horses’ description was to be copied; and (witness the wisdom of the King of Sardinia, or his delegates) notwithstanding that Savoy is so poor a country, they receive ungraciously, and would eject unceremoniously, strangers who bring English horses. The custom-house officers were in the first instance about to bind us to quitting the territory within three days; however, when D—— represented that I required some rest, and asked for ten, they consistently inserted two months.
The road from the pont is very good, and the country fertile and lovely as we ascended the hill, and the Guier wound far below in its wild ravine. The mountains at every step grow more grand; the fine trees, which abound, are mostly chestnut; and the cottages, now built in the Swiss style, with jutting roofs and outside stairs and galleries, hide themselves among them, sometimes betrayed only by a stream of light smoke. Their gardens are even neater than in England, and we have a luxury which you perhaps will hardly comprehend, in cooling our horses’ feet in the innumerable mountain streams which sparkle along at every step. Arrived at the summit of the hill, look back towards the pont and France, (an extensive and fertile view,) before the road turns suddenly, and the scene, the very air changes at the narrow road, with its giant wall of rock on the left hand, and on the other a low parapet, from which the precipice goes sheer down to the Guier, foaming angrily at its bottom, and warring with the crags, which, towering again on the other side, have opened hardly enough to leave it way. This is the Pass of Chailles, very grand, and I thought rather fearful, as Fanny continually started from the cliff and towards the parapet. The road, such as I have described it, winds a considerable way, and before us, in the space the advancing rocks leave, were mountains white with snow, which an old peasant said were those near La Chartreuse. The mountain wind was chill certainly, but we confessed it had a “freshness and life” which revived. The sky, which had been cloudless, suddenly changed, and the clouds came rolling over the crags, bringing a muttering of thunder and then a loud clap, augmented and prolonged by all the échos. The horses trembled, and promised to be troublesome, and we got on faster; but the storm had rushed on above our heads, and settled on the top of a purple peak far away, before we reached the cottage, which stands where this wild pass ends, and the roaring Guier becomes a quiet stream. Fear, I suppose, had made me thirsty and hungry; I bought some fresh milk in a clean bowl, and Fanny sprang aside from a yoke of oxen, and covered her mane and my habit.
We had intended sleeping at Les Échelles but, as at La Tour du Pin, the inn looked unpromising, and we merely fed the horses and went on to Chambéry. Last Thursday was the Fête Dieu, and the wreaths of box, which only a few feet asunder hung across the narrow street above our heads, looked uncommonly pretty. The Valley des Échelles opened before us as we left the town. Fancy the long fertile vale surrounded by mountains, which enclose it except at the spot where you enter—behind you and the town they are towering and snowy, while those which skirt the road you pursue the whole length of the valley are milder and green and cultivated, a contrast to the range of bare and broken cliffs on your right and parallel to them.
In front at the extremity of the vale, which it crosses like its barrier, is the hill which terminates it; the road you must travel cut along its edge and crossing two bridges; the last so high that the head turns to look at it, for it arches over a mountain stream, and its white line seen from below looks like a branch of bent osier. A gradual ascent leads to it, and, arrived there, you have no terror left but much wonder, for fifty paces beyond the road seems to terminate. The rock is before, and the precipice below, and you forget the grotto cut through.
Beneath the bridge the stream rushes turbulently down, forcing a narrow passage among trees and stones, and gushing far under the stone arch into the valley; the loveliest view of the valley itself is from this high bridge: you see it terminated by distant snow peaks and guarded by its mighty frontier of rocks having strange forms, in which you may fancy castle towers and cathedral portals, contrasting with the sweet mild plain below them, every yard cultivated; the glittering church spire rising among clumps of trees, and the river alternately hiding itself among its own fringes, or shining like a white riband through luxuriant corn-fields and meadows resembling flower-gardens; patches of turf under the fine old trees like dark green velvet, and cottages which, as you look down on them, make you say of each—“I could live there;” it is like the happy valley, only one would not want wings to fly out of it.
The gallery is at no great distance from a kind of passage formerly used by foot-passengers to arrive at the long ladders which were then the road to the valley, a descent of more than fifty metres; they gave it its name, des Échelles.
The entrance to the grotto is, as I told you, but a few steps further; a magnificent project nobly accomplished: it was finished only in 1813, for the passage constructed by Charles Emanuel in 1670 was not at this spot; it exists, and is still visited for its romantic beauty, but we did not see it. The grotto is blown through the solid rock, which forms its walls, and its arched roof, and is about eight hundred feet long; as it receives no light save through its two apertures, it was so dark about the centre that I could see the ground, over which Fanny trod very unwillingly, only where it shone with pools of water, which distils through the crevices and dripped on our heads all the way. Issuing from it, we found a wilder and less beautiful road, without verdure or habitation, winding among masses of grey rock, which must have a savage aspect in winter, but are now covered with purple columbine and the red ragged robin. Here and there we saw a feeble beggar or young peasant herding the few sheep or small cows perched among the crags. After a time these crags are interrupted by green knolls and brushwood, then by old trees and cottages, and we came again on a river winding through a wooded dell, a magnified copy of the Dargle in Wicklow. The road thence to Chambéry is varied and beautiful beyond expression, always good for our horses’ feet, but sometimes very ill protected from precipices, which, if not the most terrible in Savoy, are sufficiently so to break the neck of horse and rider. Not far from Chambéry is the Cascade of Cous, falling from the rock on the right about two hundred and fifty feet. It has no great volume of water, but is exceedingly picturesque, foaming or shining as it breaks against the uneven stones on the cliff’s side, or springs over them and down to the clear pool at its foot, whence it throws up a spray light as smoke, and then supplies the bright stream which passes beneath the road to the river, which we had followed some time, and was here still on the left, dashing through wooded defiles, turning romantic mills and murmuring down diminutive falls. Where the road is narrowest, some solitary peaks of granite stand by its side among trees and bushes, detached from the crags behind them like their outposts. We crossed a handsome bridge and broader stream before we caught sight of Chambéry, which lies embosomed in mountains; a bold and beautiful view, but not matching that of the Échelles. Behind the town, which lay before us, rises a line of fine frowning mountains—the Beauges; that which seems to hang over Chambéry, presenting at its summit a succession of seeming towers and ramparts like a mighty fortification. Far away to the left shone the lake of Bourget, on the road to Geneva. The valley is fertile, and the vines trained in arbours. The road close to the town has been changed, and as we crossed the new broad bridge, the abandoned one made a pretty feature in the landscape.
Entering Chambéry, we rode under the old palace of the Counts and Dukes of Savoy, with its high terrace shaded by magnificent horse-chestnuts, and a still most royal looking tower, which stands alone, and whose hollow walls have defied time and two fires. The governor’s palace is modern, and joins at its extremity another portion of the ancient building, which must once, from the traces remaining, have occupied the entire platform. The chapel remains, that part which rises above the narrow street, built in the Gothic style: the façade has been altered to the Italian taste and spoiled. We passed before fine boulevards and extensive barracks, containing at present three thousand men; and, unlike travellers worn and weary, entered the town at a gallop.