THE WILD GIRL OF SONGI.
“In the year 1731, as a nobleman was hunting at Songi, near the ancient and historic town of Chalons, on the river Champagne, in France, he discovered a couple of objects at a distance in the water, at which he fired, supposing them to be birds.
“They immediately disappeared, but arose at a point near the shore, when they were found to be two children, evidently about a dozen years of age.
“They carried to the shore some fish that they had caught, which they tore in pieces with their teeth and devoured raw, without chewing.
“After their meal, one of them found a rosary, probably lost by some devotee, with which she seemed highly delighted. She endeavored to conceal it from her companion, but the latter made the discovery, and, filled with rage and jealousy, inflicted a severe blow on the hand containing the treasure. The other returned the blow, striking her companion on the head with a heavy missile, and bringing her to the ground with a cry of pain.
“The sisters, for such they probably were, parted. The one most injured went towards the river and was never seen or heard of afterwards. The other hurried off towards the hamlet of Songi.
“She was a strange and frightful-looking creature. Her color was black, and her only clothing consisted of loose rags and the skins of animals. The people of Songi fled to their houses and barred their doors at the sight of her.
“She wandered about the place, greatly to the terror of the villagers, but at last some adventurers determined to set a dog on her. She awaited the attack coolly, but as soon as the monster came fairly within her reach, she dealt him such a blow on the head as laid him lifeless on the spot.
“The astonished peasants kept at a safe retreating distance, not wishing a personal encounter with such a creature. She endeavored to gain admittance to some of the houses, but the quaking occupants, who seem to have fancied that the evil one himself had made his appearance, securely fastened their doors and windows.
“She at length retired to the fields and climbed a tree, where she sat, appearing to the spectators like an omen of ill to Songi.
“The Viscount d’Epinoy was stopping at Songi at this time, and, supposing the creature to be a wild girl, offered a reward for her capture.
“The excitement in the hamlet cooling, a party was formed to secure the reward. The wild girl still remained in the tree, evidently taking repose. Thinking that she must be thirsty, a bucket of water was placed at the foot of the tree. She descended, looking cautiously around, and drank, but immediately ascended to the top of the tree, as though fearful of injury.
“She was at length allured to descend by a woman, who held out to her fish and fruit. She was seized by stout men, and taken to the seat of the viscount. One of her first acts was to devour raw some wild fowl, which she found in the kitchen.
“After public curiosity had been satisfied, the viscount sent her to a shepherd to be tamed. The latter found this no easy matter, and her wildness and animal nature were exhibited in so marked a manner that she became known as the shepherd’s beast.
“She sometimes escaped. Once she was missing over night, when there came a terrible snow-storm, and the poor shepherd wandered in search of her. He discovered her at last housed just as she had been in childhood, in the branches of a tree. The wind blew and the snow drifted around her, but she was loth to return. She had learned that trouble dwells in houses, and here in the tree-top, if she was cold, she was free. I wonder if she thought of her sister in whose arms she had doubtless slept in the trees, in her childhood.
“Her agility was marvellous. She would outrun the swiftest animals, even the rabbits and hares. The Queen of Poland once took her on a hunting excursion, and much amusement she afforded to the royal party. She would discover game with the shrewdness of a bird of prey, and having outrun and captured a hare, she would bring it with great eagerness to the astonished and delighted queen.
“She was once set at the table with some people of rank, at a banquet. She seemed delighted with the bright costumes, and the wit and gay spirits of the guests. Presently she was gone. She returned at last with something very choice in her apron, and with a face beaming with happiness, she approached a fine lady, and holding up a live frog by the leg said gleefully, ‘Have some?’
“She dropped the frog into the plate of the startled guest, and passing around the table, with a liberal supply of the reptiles, said, ‘Have some? have some?’
“The ladies started back from such a dessert, and the poor girl felt a pang of disappointment at the sudden rejection of the offering.
“She had gathered the frogs from a pond near at hand.
“It was a long time before she became accustomed to the habits of civilization. She died in a convent.”
“What a strange history!” said Wyllys Wynn. “She must have found her life in the convent very different from that of her childhood. What was her name?”
“They called her Maria le Blanc.”
CHAPTER XIV.
UPPER NORMANDY.
Calais.—The Black Prince.—Étretat.—French Bathing.—Legend.—Rouen.—Story of St. Louis.—Story of St. Bartholomew’s Eve.
THE Class stopped briefly at Calais, and was disappointed to find a city so famous in history situated in a barren district, and surrounded with little that is picturesque. The old walls around the town are, however, pleasant promenades, and command a view of the white cliffs of England. It was here, after a siege of eleven months, that Eustace de St. Pierre and his five companions offered themselves to Edward III. as a ransom for the city, and were saved from death by the pleading of Queen Philippa. The town was a fortress then, and looked menacingly over to England. The English proudly held possession of it for more than two hundred years, or from 1347 to 1558, when it was captured in Bloody Mary’s time by the French under the Duc de Guise.
“When I am dead,” said Mary in her last days, “and my body is opened, ye shall find Calais written on my heart.”
Calais recalls the stories of valor of the chivalrous campaigns of Edward III. and his son, the Black Prince, in Normandy. At Crecy, the Black Prince, when only sixteen years of age, led the English army to victory, and slew the King of Bohemia with his own hand.
King Edward watched this battle from a windmill on a hill. The French army was many times larger than the English. The Prince during the battle found himself hard pressed, and at one point the Earl of Warwick sent to the king for assistance.
“No, sire,” said the messenger.
“Is he wounded?”
“No, sire.”
“Is he thrown to the ground?”
“No, but he is hard-pressed.”
“Then,” said the king, “I shall send no aid. I have set my heart upon his proving himself a brave knight, and I am resolved that the victory shall be due to his own valor.”
CAPTURE OF KING JOHN AND HIS SON.
In 1356, in another campaign in Normandy, the Black Prince won a most brilliant victory at Poitiers, and captured the French King John. The latter was a brave soldier, and fought with his battle-axe until all the nobles had forsaken him. The Black Prince made a supper for him in his tent in the evening, and waited upon him at the table with his own hands. The Black Prince and the captive king rode through London together, the former in great pomp, and the latter on a cream-colored pony by his side. All of these things read prettily in history, but one is glad that the time is past when war was the game of kings, and armies were used as their playthings.
A series of easy rides near the cool sea brought the Class to the old fishing village of Étretat, now a fashionable summer resort for French artists, and a popular bathing-place for those desiring seclusion amid the coast scenery. It is situated amid rocks which the sea has excavated into arches, aiguilles, and other fantastic recesses and caverns. Its pretty châlets and villas on the hills, its gayly-dressed summer idlers, its groups of fishermen who are to be seen in all weathers, its handsome fisher girls bronzed by the sun who lead a free life by the sea, its bathers in brilliant dresses of blue serge and bright trimmings, its bracing air and usually fine weather, make it one of the quaintest and most restful nooks in France.
There are the remains of a Norman church near the sea. It is said to occupy the spot where the people watched the great flotilla of William the Conqueror drift to St. Valery, there to take the Norman army to England.
A French watering-place is quite different from an American seaside resort. You have your board and sleeping-room in one of the hotels, but your parlors, piazzas, and places of recreation are in an elegant pleasure house, called the Casino. For the privileges of the Casino you pay a small sum; at Étretat it amounts to about ten dollars a month. The billiard-rooms, ball-room, and the rooms for general conversation are in the Casino.
Every one bathes in the sea at Étretat, women and children, whole families together, and most of the girls are expert swimmers. It is delightful to sit upon the shingle, as the pebbly beach is called, and watch the sport in the sun-bright mornings or golden and dreamy afternoons. The costumes of the bathers are so pretty that the scene seems like a ball in the sea. Bathing men are stationed here and there to render any needed assistance.
The great caverns which the sea has worn in the rocks at Étretat remind one of the ruins of immense cathedrals, and are grand indeed in the light of the full summer moon.
The place abounds with story-telling fishermen. The Class was told one story here which is worthy of a poem.
“A beautiful stream once watered the valley. Its bed may still be seen, but it now runs under ground. On the stream an industrious miller built his mill and did a thriving business. One day a woman, sick and destitute, came to him for help. He turned heartlessly away from her with abuse. The poor creature raised her withered arm, and said,—
“‘To-morrow thou shalt have thy reward.’
“When the miller awoke the next morning he found his mill standing on dry ground. The river had gone down into the earth, where it still runs.”
TOWER OF JOAN OF ARC, ROUEN.
The fisher’s hymn which Ernest Wynn gave the Club at its first meeting was asked for here by Master Lewis, and was procured. It is sung before the departure of ships and during great storms in the fishing season, being a part of the mass for seamen, or the messe d’equipage.
The Class left Étretat for Rouen.
“O Rouen! Rouen! it is here I must die, and here shall be my last resting-place!” said Joan of Arc at the stake. Rouen was hardly the resting-place of the heroic peasant girl, for her ashes were thrown into the Seine. But the thought of the stranger on coming to Rouen is less associated with its history under the sea-kings of the North, the Norman dukes and the English invaders, than with the hard fate and the public memorials of the simple shepherdess, who seems to have been called from her flocks to change the destiny of France.
THE MAID OF ORLEANS.
The Class entered Rouen after a series of short, zigzag journeys, partly in coaches and partly on foot, going leisurely from town to town through roads that presented to view continuous landscapes of shining orchards, ripening gardens, and resplendent poppy-fields; stopping at Amiens, the birthplace of Peter the Hermit, meeting here and there a ruin, and finding everywhere the connecting historical links between the present and the past.
At Amiens the Class was brought into the presence of a relic which greatly excited the boys’ wonder.
“This church,” said their guide, taking the Class to a side chapel of the cathedral, “contains a very rare relic,—a part of the head of John the Baptist!”
Passing into the beautiful chapel the Class was shown the shrine containing the precious treasure, which consists of the supposed frontal bone, and the upper jaw of the saint.
The valet de place who accompanied the Class from the hotel seemed to have no doubt of the genuineness of the relic, or of the propriety of adoring it, if indeed it were real,—and he bowed reverently before the shrine.
“A very rare relic,” he said.
“Wonderful!” said Frank. “I did not know that such sacred remains were anywhere to be found as are shown us in the churches of France.”
“Quite a rare relic,” said Master Lewis, coolly. “I believe that, previous to the French Revolution, several whole heads of John the Baptist were to be seen in France.”
“You do not think that a church like this would be guilty of imposture, do you?” asked Ernest Wynn.
“Not wilfully. Most of these French relics were brought from Constantinople at the time of the Crusades. They may be genuine,—the people believe them so; but, in the absence of direct historic evidence, it is probable that the Crusaders were deceived in them by others, who in their turn may have been deceived.
“You will be shown wonderful relics or shrines supposed to contain them, in nearly all the great churches of France. The French people were taught their reverence for relics by St. Louis, who sought to enrich the churches of his country with such treasures.”
“Who was St. Louis?” asked Ernest.
“I am glad to have you ask the question,” said Master Lewis. “His name meets you everywhere in France.