LIST OF WORKS CONSULTED
THE DATES REFER TO THE EDITION MADE USE OF
[INTRODUCTION]
Although the history of Burgundy is intimately connected with that of England—the policy of the Valois Dukes, for example, affected profoundly our national destinies during the hundred years' war—the average English reader's knowledge of the subject is contained within the four corners of a wine list. He knows Beaune—knows the name well, as that of a drinkable brand, may have blessed it in his heart, when a ray from the shaded lamp shot through its ruby depths. If by any chance he loves Meredith, he may, even, under its kindly influence, have whispered to his fair partner, Dr. Middleton's phrase: "Burgundy has great genius; Burgundy sings the inspired ode." But should his lady slip in a question concerning this ruddy heartener of man, he could not answer; he would stumble between the Côte d'Azur and the Côte d'Or.
Not another town of Burgundy could he name. Dijon he knows, and remembers; because there he scalded his throat with hot coffee, gulped down, at three in the morning, on the way home from the Riviera; or, bound for Switzerland, he may have passed through the town. But he does not know Dijon as a Burgundian Capital, nor as a proud city of royal palaces and unrivalled sculpture. At most, when he hears the duchy named, there floats through his mind a shadowy memory of Henry V., or of King Lear.[1]
Yet Burgundy was the scene of events vital in the making of Europe. It was one of the strongholds of Roman civilization. It saw the genesis of a religious movement that was the greatest feature of eleventh and twelfth century history. Cluny was a nursery of popes; Citeaux became a breeding ground of saints; their abbots lorded it over mighty kings; they dictated to potentates and princes; they bent all western Europe beneath their sway. Bernard's eloquence fired three nations with enthusiasm for the second crusade.
That Power, when it had passed from the great monastic houses, fell later, in a modified form, to the Valois Dukes. Safely housed in Dijon, or in Bruges, ruling a people sheltered, to some extent, from the appalling disasters that were transforming the fair kingdom of France into a howling wilderness, they kept a more than royal state. Gathering about their persons a great company of distinguished artists and valiant knights, they established a school of sculpture unmatched in their time; they held pageants and tournaments the most brilliant that chivalry had ever seen.
Headstrong and ambitious, they challenged the crown of France, and defied it; they dreamed dreams of a Burgundian empire extending eastward beyond the Alps and northward to the Channel.
'Tis true that these ambitions were never sated. The house of Valois had not the constructive mind of which empire is begotten: moreover, Destiny, and Louis XI., were too strong for them. But the glorious tale of ducal efforts towards that goal outshines all other sunset splendours of dying mediævalism.
When I think of what might be made of such a theme, I could tear these pages, because my best is not better.
Yet history does not end the attractions of Burgundy. It only begins them. Nature, too, has her pageant "in this best garden of the world," she will hold you here, whether you choose the delicious, poplar-fringed plains of the Saône, the "waterish" Burgundy that the French king sneers at in "Lear"—he would have gloried in the land had it been his own—or the stern and silent hills of the Jura and the Morvan; or the vine-clad slopes of sunny Côte d'Or.
But, best of all, this land and its people have a character wholly their own. You will not feel here the twilight melancholy of Celtic Brittany; the quivering, electric atmosphere of romantic Provence; nor the passionate intensity of dark Languedoc; but you will find a country well typified by its wines, its sculpture, its architecture—a solid, ample, full-bodied, full-blooded land; a people strong and vivacious, concealing, beneath a somewhat harsh and stern exterior, a cheerful heart and an abundant generosity; comfortable, courageous, eloquent, sonorous folk, that love a good dinner, and a good story to follow, that have produced a Bernard, a Bossuet, and a Lamartine.
The key to this Burgundian character, with its blend of Gallic, Latin, and German elements, the key to Burgundian history, too, is the geographical position of the country. Its great water-ways flow northward, by the Yonne, to the English Channel, and southward, by the Saône, to the Mediterranean and the traffic of the East; along its valleys run the great trading roads and railways connecting northern and southern, eastern and western Europe. With the exception of the Jura, no natural barriers exist between Burgundy and the adjoining lands. It was open at all quarters; from every point of the compass it borrowed, and it lent. Michelet's visionary thought has summed up, in a splendid phrase, the secret of Burgundy. He says, speaking of the country round Dijon: "La France n'a pas d'élément plus liant, plus capable de réconcilier le nord et le midi."
There you have it. To reconcile the bitter antagonisms of north and south, and, in a lesser degree, of east and west, was Burgundy's destiny; the geographical position that enabled her to do so was at once the source of her greatness, and the cause of her fall. While she remained independent, unity was impossible for France; and England's peace was imperilled by irresistible temptations to attack a weakened neighbour.
In writing this book, I have endeavoured, as far as possible, to preserve historical continuity. That must be my excuse for geographical flights which, else, might bewilder my readers.
My hope is that these pages may awaken, here and there, lasting interest in a land that, whether for varied scenery, sunny climate, good living, characteristic architecture, or, above all, historical associations of the first importance, can hold its own with any other ancient province of France.
Footnotes:
[1] Henry V., Act V., Scene 2; King Lear, Act I., Scene 1.
[CONTENTS]
[LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.]
[CHAPTER I]
We had expected quiet, rural times in this far-away village of St.-Léger-sous-Beuvray; but I doubt whether we shall get them. The village green in front of the Hotel du Morvan shows signs of unusual animation; it is dotted with carts, which are discharging tent-poles, canvas, golden cars, and other paraphernalia of a country festival; and, surer sign still, through the door of an open shed, I can see hanging, headless and lamentable, the gaping corpse of a fatted calf. Yes! there is his tawny countenance and two mild eyes looking down, like those of a martyred saint, from the cruel hook. The odour of him, wafted in succulent puffs, from the dead-house door, has cheered with a splendid hope half the dogs in the village, and awakened from torpor two ancient hounds, who prowl, almost youthfully, sniffing fragrant memories in the air.
"What is going to happen?" I asked the landlord, who was sharpening tools on a bench.
"'Tis the Louée, Monsieur, the hiring that takes place every year. All in the neighbourhood who want farm-hands, or domestic servants, and those who want places, come to-morrow morning and make bargains. And the Directeur of Enfants Assistés (Foundlings) is coming, too; he is to stop here at my hotel, and so his children get work."
We were up early the next morning. Only deaf men, or dead ones, sleep through a Louée. There came to us in our bedroom, with the sunshine, an indescribable babel of sounds—babble of voices, braying of trumpets, banging of drums. To a Londoner, strange methods of doing business!
We went out into the din and the sunshine to find the transformation complete. All the green was dotted with booths bright with gaudy trinkets of every imaginable colour; shooting galleries, and a hundred other sou-trapping devices. Before every inn had sprung up, as if by magic, a salle de bal, with a real wooden floor, and a little balcony for the musicians. There was a gipsy encampment, too, where, heedless of the din, a Romany sat upon the trunk of a fallen tree, methodically skinning hedgehogs with a knife; while his two small sons were unmethodically currey-combing the yellow pony, and dusting him down with his own tail, cut off and tied to a stick! The door of the caravan opened; there was a glimpse of a woman's arm, and a pailful of slops shot out, sparkling in the sun, to alight where fate might decree. Brown drops splashed up into the hollow eyes of Grandmother, dreaming on a chair by the steps. Meanwhile the peasants went on hiring and being hired; some sealing the bargain with a glass of red wine, in the Café; some, if the maid were comely, with a kiss. Peasants I call them, though, at first sight, this array of black blouses and black squash hats suggests a meeting of nonconformist parsons, rather than farmers of the Morvan. Yet one learns to accept them so, and to enjoy the deep, black shadows that lurk in the folds of the garments. Straw hats are few; but the white caps of the old ladies are there for contrast.
Wearied of the buzzing crowd, the nerve-racking crack of the rifles, we wandered out of the village, and sat by the edge of a ploughed field, where we watched, above a rampart of firs shot with spring greens, the purple mass of dark Beuvray lifting its crested summit into the cloudless sky,—mysterious Beuvray, whence of old, as darkness closed upon their homes, the wondering peasants in the valley, heard, from the mysterious mountain city above their heads, the sound of great gates creaking harshly upon their hinges.
But to-morrow is for Beuvray. To-day we will watch the long stream of peasants coming to the Fair, by the lanes that wind, up and down, among the buttress hills of the mount. They come on foot, in farm carts, on bicycles; but most of them come in little, trim donkey-carts; husband and wife sitting primly side by side, their tanned faces shewing strongly above the silently twitching, brown ears of the "baudet." Here is a family in a donkey-drawn washing-basket, three generations of them, packed like sardines. After déjeuner, when the hiring is done, the older ones leave; the turn of the younger is come. Then the fillettes begin to appear—Fifines made fine for the Fair—all cut after the same pattern, with white blouses below much be-ribboned straw hats; each carrying, because of the mid-day sun, a grey jacket lined with light blue. These come tripping from village and hamlet, clinging to each other, with little toddlers holding their hands; all chattering, smiling, sweltering, happy. The fiddlers will be tuning up in the Salles de Bal.
So we followed the maids back to the village, and wandered again among the booths. An old, old lady, beside a not less ancient friend was nursing a tin mug. They were discussing bargains and their budget. "I got this for three sous; et je trouve que c'est bien solide." On that point she was cruelly deceived. But what matter? Thinking makes it so. What a popping of corks comes from the Café!
Bang! Bang!! Bang!! Bang!! Bang!!! The crowd surges toward a compelling din. Before the largest of the tents a half-naked, muscular ruffian stands silent upon a tub; beside him another, clad in shiny velveteens, shouts himself hoarse.
"Gentlemen, you all know that the 'lutte est le premier gymnastique du monde.' Come in then, and see. Our professor challenges all comers. He will wrestle with a great bear. Now for la lutte aux ours! Entrez; we will show you the véritable gorille, and the most terrible beast in the world, the Monstre du Pole Nord." And, indeed, above his head was writ in gold letters, the fearsome legend: "Monstre du Pole Nord."
We went in, with other youths and maidens. The baby that followed us, shewing signs of strong emotion, was hastily removed by its mother.
"Up against the canvas, please gentlemen. La séance va commencer au milieu!"
We watched while, before the bars that held the four-legged animals, the naked bipeds struggled furiously; clutching, writhing, rolling, till the bare, oily skins were dark with perspiration and sawdust. Their eyes were so full of it, that, between the rounds, they were gouging it out with their knuckles. "Ca y est! Ca y est!" "At it again!"
"Bravo monsieur l'amateur, un petit bravo pour l'amateur"—with arms like telegraph posts—"le plus fort du pays." So it went on—the "lutte aux hommes," the "lutte aux ours."
For a full five minutes the sanded professor leant up against and pushed the furry mass of Jean Pierre, the feebly scratching, tangled bear, who was too bored to be méchant. From behind their bars the Monstre Du Pole Nord (a sloth bear) and "le véritable gorille" (a Barbary ape) grunted approval of their companion's efforts.
Through the crowded entrance we pushed our way into the largest of the Salles de Bal, bright with lit lamps and coloured ribbons. In a scarlet and green box, with a yellow diamond, slung to the roof of the tent, the fiddlers and viol players, sitting in their shirt-sleeves, squeaked and ground lustily. There was babble of voices and rhythmic scuffle of feet. A young soldier, fair and close-cropped, in uniform, crossed the salle, bowed to my wife, and asked for a dance. A moment's hesitation, and she was whirling round with the others. As he said to her at parting; "You are not in France every day." It was three in the morning before darkness and silence settled down upon St.-Léger-sous-Beuvray.
The next morning we rode to the Mount by a lane that, undulating, climbs, through pasture, arable, and woodland, among the buttress hills of Beuvray, to the Poirier aux Chiens, a lonely farmhouse, where we left our bicycles. Cyclists are rather worried hereabout by excitable dogs and hysterical sheep; but the former are not dangerous, as they are in Languedoc and other parts of the south of France; and we are happily free to-day from the dangers of two hundred years ago; as when, on the 18th of June, 1718, at nightfall, St. Léger was visited by a mad wolf from the top of Beuvray, that wounded and disfigured sixteen people, of whom all but one died of hydrophobia. The single exception was a woman, who had only been scratched by the animal's claws. After this incident a Confraternity of St. Hubert was established in connection with the Church, and by the authority of the bishop, for the destruction of wild beasts.[2]
The easiest path by which those who are not familiar with the locality can climb Beuvray, is from the Croix du Rebout, nearly two kilometres beyond the Poirier aux Chiens, at the top of the col, just where the descent begins. Several other paths lead up to it; but as there are more than twenty miles of Gaulish roads intersecting on the tree-clad slopes of the Mount, it is very easy to lose yourself completely, as I did on my first visit; until there was nothing for it but to descend to the road and seek another path. My only consolation for those two hours of wasted energy was that, while lunching beside the forest path, I met, face to face, a red fox ambling jauntily on his way. How we stared at one another; and how I wished that, for once, he could talk.
But, "after all," the reader may ask, "Why climb Beuvray? When you are up there, what is to be seen but a view; and what mean these twenty miles of Gaulish roads through a wilderness of boughs?" To which pertinent question I reply, that in all France there is but one Beuvray.
You will find more romantic peaks in the Alpines of Provence, you will find grander, more striking mountains in volcanic Auvergne; in the Alps you will see summits, clothed in eternal snow, beside which the Mount is but a molehill; but nowhere will you find such a hill as this, whose flanks have echoed to the tramp of Cæsar's legions, whose crest, the council chamber of kings and generals, has flamed through long nights with the beacon fires of a great city. Nowhere else will you find a hill that the centuries have so peopled with dragon and saint, with phantom hound and spectre horseman, and have made as harmonious with legendary poetry and immemorial voices, as nature has made her woods vocal with whispering fern and wandering wind, with the ripple of the brook, and the stir of creeping things in the grass.[3]
For this Beuvray is no other than Bibracte, the Gaulish oppidum that Cæsar speaks of as "Oppido Aeduorum longe maximo et copiosissimo."[4] Tradition, as I have said, had rumoured it for centuries as the site of an ancient city; but many had supposed that Autun was the place referred to, until the researches of M. Bulliot, the Antiquary of Hamerton's delightful work "The Mount," settled the problem once for all. Of the history of the last days of the town I will say something in the next chapter; for the present, let us be content to mount the rocky, rain-washed, Gaulish road that leads up, through interlacing boughs, to the "Grand Hotel des Gaulois," or, in other words, the little house and sheds near the summit, which the antiquary occupied while making his researches and excavations.
The path runs beside many of the most interesting discoveries, though nothing of the remains is to be seen, the owner having stipulated that all "fouilles" should be covered up, a precaution necessary in any event, if the primitive Gaulish homes of stones and wood, with mud for mortar, are ever to be preserved to a later posterity.[5]
After passing the huts, you come, by a grassy woodland path winding up through ferns and bracken, to the terrace on the summit of the hill, now mercifully clear of the ubiquitous trees. Here, on the site of the ancient temple to the Dea Bibracte, one of the many Gaulish gods, M. Bulliot has erected a little chapel in Romanesque style, dedicated to St. Martin. Here, also, is a granite cross, with a carving of St. Martin performing an act of charity at the gate of Amiens; not far away is a memorial to M. Bulliot himself.
Tradition has given much prominence to the doings of St. Martin here, as elsewhere in France, and it seems probable that the saint did visit Bibracte, about the year 377, on his way to Autun. M. Bulliot, and other authorities, agree that he preached on the plateau of Beuvray, possibly from the Pierre de la Wivre; and the legend has it that here he overthrew a pagan temple, arousing thereby such fierce anger among the inhabitants, that he escaped only by a miraculous leap of his ass across the gorge of Malvaux (Mauvaise vallée) to the south-west of the Mount, where the animal's hoof-prints are still to be seen. Later I shall give fully a precisely similar legend concerning St. Martin in the valley of Nantoux.
When once we had got our bearings, and accustomed ourselves to the silence and solitude of the spot, we began to feel the charm of the lonely plateau, and to realize its attractions for those who would live close to nature and to the past. When I first visited it, on a bright autumn afternoon, not a leaf was astir upon the golden oaks, not a spray of the bramble trembled, not a rustle was heard among the dead ferns in the grass; only, from far away in the valley below, came the rumble of a cart-wheel, the crack of a sportsman's rifle in the distant woods.
"So still it was that I could almost hear The sigh of all the sleepers in the world; And all the rivers running to the sea."
I looked down through the fringing trees. For mile after mile the country lay golden before me, fields rising and falling, till they were lost in the eastern sky. There was little St. Léger, a toy village among tiny hills; there was the Etang de Poisson, a sapphire set in emeralds, and far away the evening sun flashing upon the spires of Autun Cathedral.[6] The sound of a footstep broke the stillness. A youth was approaching me—a chétif, mis-shapen, shaking thing. He gazed on me with drooping jaw, and passed muttering—an idiot wandering through a night-mare world.
Then I, too, began to dream fantastic dreams, and to see spectres of the past, such as—the peasants tell you—still flit over the crest of Beuvray,—a white horse galloping at midnight, a loud voice commanding ghostly legions in Latin; shadowy riders, moving shades of mediæval knights and barons still climbing the stony paths to this their airy tilting ground. Winged gabble raches passed screaming over my head, and, from afar, baying in deep-mouthed thunder, I heard the hounds of the phantom hunter of Touleur.[7]
But that was a thundery day last autumn, and this is a soft April evening, with a breeze in the leaves, and silver clouds afloat in a blue sky. Moreover, I am not alone.
We wandered back by the path along which we had come, and made our way to the Pierre de la Wivre, a curious, pointed rock rising from the plateau. Its sulphurous yellow colour is due to the lichen with which it is covered. From the green headland, surrounded with holly-bushes, on which it stands, you have magnificent views over rounded, village-dotted hills, whose brown-green upland fields nestle up to the dark forests that crown every summit. Up from the valleys come the shouts of the teamsters urging on the slow, pale oxen.
This Pierre de la Wivre shows signs of man's handling, and has probably been the scene of human sacrifices, and of other ancient religious rites. We asked ourselves whether there may not have been some religious significance in the surrounding belt of holly bushes, since there are indications of a similar belt round the chapel of St. Martin. Perhaps the holly tree was sacred to the Gauls. Sitting upon the stone we recalled the legend as told by Hamerton.[8]
"The peasants believe that the Wivern dwells near it in a hidden cavern guarding its treasure, but that once a year the cavern opens and the Wivern goes out, leaving the treasure unguarded. As to the time of year when this happens the narrators differ. Some say that it is at midnight on Christmas Eve, others fix it for Easter Day during High Mass; in either case it is during Mass, as there is a midnight service at Christmas. The popular legend in its present form goes on to recount how a certain woman, accompanied by her child, went to the stone of the Wivern, instead of going to Mass, intending to take his treasure. She found the cave open, entered, and took as much gold as she could carry, and came out just in time to escape the Wivern on his return. On looking round for her child, she could not find him anywhere. The cavern being now closed again, she knew not what to do, and went in despair to the priest, who told her to go to the place every day and pour milk and honey on the stone till the expiration of twelve months, and then, when the day came for the opening of the cave, to take her treasure back to it undiminished, and she would find her child. So she went day by day without fail, in heat and cold, in fine weather and foul, and poured milk and honey on the stone. At last the day came when the Wivern left the cave, and the mother found her child within, sitting quite unhurt, and in perfect health, with an apple before him on a stone table. So she restored the treasure gladly, and took away her child."
M. Bulliot thinks that the legend was originally one of some Gaulish sacrilege and reparatory oblation, the Gaulish priests requiring a daily offering (perhaps of milk and honey) until certain stolen treasure was restored. The Catholic character of the legend he looks upon as nothing but an aftergrowth; and the apple has, in his opinion, a distinct though undiscoverable significance.
From the Pierre de la Wivre we could see, on the next headland to our left, the ridge of Pierre Salvée sharply serrated against the sky. There, half an hour later, we found ourselves rewarded by a glorious sight. Westward we could see extending mile upon mile, ridge after ridge, the glowing mountains of Auvergne, and the valley of the Loire, veiled in a shimmering mist, through whose mysterious wreaths flashed, here and there, in diamond splendour, the sun-touched roof of a humble cottage and the tower of a lordly chateau.[9]
With all the thousand other interesting details concerning Bibracte—the Gaulish roads, the ramparts, the remains, the descriptions and industries of the town, the visits of Cæsar—I have no space to deal here; but I recommend particularly to the reader Hamerton's book, from which I have quoted, and M. Dechelette's handy guide, "L'Oppidum de Bibracte."
We cycled from St. Léger to Autun, by way of La Grand Verrière Monthelon, and the Valley of the Arroux. Monthelon, some seven kilometres from Autun, is a place famous in French Ecclesiastical history. It has, as is common in Burgundian villages, a delightful little Romanesque Church, concerning one of whose curés Hamerton tells a good story which I cannot refrain from giving in the original tongue.
This old curé, then, was fond of putting Latin into his sermons, a little bit at a time, his own Latin; not of the best. "'Lorsque je paraîtrai devant Notre Seigneur, il me demandera; 'Curé Monthelonius, ubi sunt brebetis meis'—ce qui veut dire; 'Curé de Monthelon, où sont me brebis?' Et moi je lui répondrai; 'bêtes je les ai trouvées, bêtes je les ai laissées, et bêtes elles sont très probablement encore.'"
Can you refrain from reading "The Mount" after that?
Footnotes:
[2] Hamerton's "The Mount," p. 26.
[3] Alesia, though intensely interesting, lacks the mysterious quality of Beuvray.
[4] De Bello Gallico, lib. 1, cap. 23: "By far the finest and largest town of the Aedui."
[5] I am told that the fouilles are open every year during a part of the month of August.
[6] Hamerton says, that, on a clear day you can see Mont Blanc, 157 miles as the crow flies. It is the distance from London to Scarborough.
[7] "The Mount," pp. 54-56.
[8] "The Mount," pp. 103-4.
[9] The Pierre Salvée has no legend; the name is probably derived from some ancient divinity.
[CHAPTER II]
In the railway station of Autun we had waited long for our bicycles to be taken out of the train. They did not appear. The porters were all busy with a cattle-truck that they were pushing casually down a siding, till it was stopped in mid-career by the buffers of another truck.
Bang!! Rattle! Bang!! The thicket of horns, visible from without, shook like a wood in a winter gale. A mild white head was thrust over the lime-washed barrier, mutely protesting. We echo the animal's protest, and our own.
"Do you always keep travellers waiting like this?"
"You see, Monsieur, it is because of the cow, she is bien souffrante."
"Then why treat her so?" I pointed to the still trembling truck; "but in any case, are we of less importance than a cow? Are not we, too, bien souffrant?"
"Yes, but you see, Monsieur, if the cow died, the patron would lose four hundred francs; but, had I known, I would have brought your bicycles earlier." We reached the Hotel St. Louis at last.
Then, wishing to escape, until dinner-time, from the still glowing streets, we crossed the Place du Champs de Mars, followed the gentle descent of the Faubourg d'Arroux, and passed beneath the Roman gate that leads northward from the city of Augustus into the open plain. A hundred yards or so further on, a sharp turn to the left brought us to two bridges crossing the tributary streams that wind among the whispering poplars, beneath which, all day long, the kneeling blanchisseuses have been pounding mercilessly their unoffending washing. Continuing our walk between the dusty green hedges of the lane meandering through the fertile plain of Autun, we saw, rising before us, a building whose mysterious, alluring aspect at once rivetted our attention, as it must that of all who have an eye for the spirit of the past, and an ear for her call. We entered boldly by the gate in the hedge, and shared possession of the field with the pale cows, who, placid as the stones, and not unlike them in colour, lifted to us questioning eyes.
The monument,—all that remains of it, rather,—consists of two great stone walls, adjacent sides of a building, ruined and roofless. It rises in the midst of the meadow, from among the grasses and brambles about its base, a huge, weird, Caliban-like thing, shattered, yet still massive, pierced with great tortured openings, and many smaller ones above. The golden light of evening, gilding it, casts into the holes and crevices, between the weather-worn masonry, pitchy shadows from which the stones bristle out defiantly, as though challenging the centuries to undo them, if man will but hold his hand.
This relic of Roman times, called by the peasants, "The Temple of Janus"—though some antiquarians deny that it was ever a temple, and that the three headed god was ever worshipped there—is not the only striking object in the landscape. Away to the north-west, behind the tossing boughs of the poplars, the setting sun is adorning with changing purples the flanks of the distant hills. The broadest of those peaks, crested with dark foliage, is none other than our old friend the Mount.
We turned to the opposite side of the valley. Before us were symbols of two later periods of Burgundy's prosperity—the modern city of Autun, seated proudly upon the lower slopes of a mountain throne, and, high above the roofs, the great mass of the cathedral of St. Lazare lifting her Gothic spire to the sky.
The peculiar interest of the spot, the reason why we chose it as a starting point in our travel through Southern Burgundy, is that here we have, before our very eyes, visible symbols of four clearly marked stages in the history of the Duchy; the Gallic, Roman, Gothic, and modern periods.
We will begin with the Gallic period, in the days when Cæsar wrote of that city, there upon Mont Beuvray; "Bibracte, oppido Aeduorum longe maximo et copiosissimo";[10] and tell, very shortly, the story of the tribe, in their relations with the Roman conquerors.[11]
The Aedui, concerning whom all our available information comes from the Latin writers, were a Gallic tribe, inhabiting, approximately, the space of country bounded on the east by the Saône, on the south by the chain of mountains between the Lyonnais and Auvergne, on the west by the Loire, and on the north by the valleys of the Vouge, the Oze, the Brenne and the Yonne. They were a virile, warlike race, that, from a very early period, had been recognised as the superior of the neighbouring races, among which the strongest were, perhaps, their enemies and rivals, the Arverni of mountainous Auvergne. For very many years before the Roman invasion, there had been intercommunication—often of an aggressive nature—between the Aedui and the Italian races; but it was not until the year 123 B.C. that anything in the nature of a direct alliance was formed between the former and the Romans, although Tacitus and Cicero both allude to them as "Brothers of the Roman Nation"; and the weaker people naturally would not be slow to take advantage of the great military strength of the new-comers, if it could be exercised on their behalf. The occasion soon came to put that strength to the test, when, after a series of quarrels with the Arverni and other neighbouring tribes, the latter summoned the Germans to their assistance. The Aedui, feeling that their independence was threatened, sent their chief Druid priest, Divitiacus, to appeal unto Cæsar.
Before we see how he fared, let us glance at this leader, whose statue stands to-day in the Promenade des Marbres at Autun. The Druids were the magistrate-priests of their respective cities, where, by the right of knowledge, riches, birth—for all were of noble blood—they exercised almost despotic power. They were the theologians, philosophers, jurists, astronomers, physicians, and moralists of their times; they were the educators of youth, the depositaries of the holy mysteries of their religion, and of the supernatural forces; the arbitors of life and death—since no human sacrifice might be offered without their sanction.
They were also superintendents of the observance of religious rites, of the practice of the ritual demanded by the gods. Still subject to those gods, the people would fear the priest not less than the magistrate. Kings, even, were awed by these mouthpieces of the most high. Such was he whom the Aedui chose for their ambassador.
Divitiacus went to Rome, and there, in person, pleaded his cause before the senate. His embassy seems to have been of little apparent effect; but, though he lost his suit, he gained a friend—Cicero.
In spite of the Druid's failure, Cæsar's legions were, nevertheless, soon on their way to Gaul. The Helvetii, coveting the fertile land that lay beside theirs, decided to attempt its conquest. Cæsar, aided by some Aeduen troops, who now fought for the first time beneath the eagle, met the invaders on the banks of the Saône,[12] and annihilated them in the first great battle of his life. Henceforth, for a time, the two nations are brothers. "Aeduii, fratres nostri, pugnant."[13] Such they remained; until the next nation that threatened them—Ariovistus and his German hordes—had suffered the fate of the Helvetii.
It was, however, inevitable that the warlike tribes of Gaul should endeavour, sooner or later, to throw off the yoke of an alien civilization, which, while it brought them material blessings of inestimable value—of which not the least was the introduction of the vine,—was, nevertheless, galling to their spirit of sturdy independence. Soon the Aedui were being stirred to revolt. Foremost among the discontents, was the leader of the Aeduen cavalry, Dumnorix, brother to Divitiacus, though his opposite in character. The trusted ally of Cæsar, and the friend of Cicero, Divitiacus the Druid accepted philosophically the Roman dominion; his brother, turbulent, adventurous, restless—a Prince Rupert of his day—had other dreams for his country. Cæsar was about to embark on his second expedition to Britain, when the news came that Dumnorix, who was under orders to accompany him, had withdrawn, followed by the Aeduen cavalry. Cæsar, delaying his embarkation, sent his own cavalry in pursuit, with orders to kill or capture the rebel, if he refused to submit.
Soon overtaken, Dumnorix defended himself valiantly, and fell, sword in hand, with the cry on his lips: "I die a free citizen of a free country."[14] One is tempted to wish that the people of Autun had raised in the "Place des Marbres," beside that of his more philosophic brother, a statue to this gallant leader of a forlorn hope.
The example of Dumnorix was followed, before long, by almost the whole of Roman Gaul; the principal cities being quite unable to resist the temptation offered by the long absence of their enemy at the capital. Cæsar, writing from Rome, protested vigorously against the ingratitude of the Aedui. He reminded them of their grievous plight before his legions freed them; of their decimated armies, of their ravaged land, of the heavy tributes, the noble hostages wrung from them. But he spoke in deaf ears. The Aedui had definitely linked their destiny with that of their nation. Only the final arbitrament of force could be appealed to.
They summoned to a council of war, Vercingetorix, the ablest general of his day, chief of their hereditary enemies, the Arverni; but, accustomed for long to regard themselves as the dominant tribe of the Gauls, they offered him only a subordinate command. His refusal of any command, other than the highest, was followed by an assembly general of the Gallic tribes at Bibracte, when, on the matter being put to the vote, the great meeting, with one voice, proclaimed Vercingetorix their leader.[15] The story of his last desperate struggle against the Romans at Alesia, and of his defeat and death, do not properly belong to the history of Autun, nor to that of Bibracte.
Gaul had become a province of the great Roman Empire. A higher civilisation, already familiar to the conquered tribes, is to impose its dominion, its architecture, its art, upon the conquered land. Bibracte, the oppidum on the wooded hills, will echo no more to the shouts of Gauls acclaiming their general or their victory. Deserted, probably in the first years of the Christian era, silence reigns henceforth over the hills; silence broken only by the patter of rain drops, by the moan of the wind, or the weird howl of the wolf, roaming, at midnight, among the ruins of the abandoned city.
Meanwhile, here, upon the plain below, another and fairer city was arising—Augustodunum, the Roman capital of Gaul, now known as Autun. It has often been asserted that the location of Bibracte upon Mont Beuvray is merely legendary, and that Autun is the historic site of the great city of the Aedui. But this theory, as we have seen, has been finally exploded by the researches of M. Bulliot. He proves conclusively, not only that Bibracte was situate on the summit of Beuvray, but also that Autun was built upon virgin soil, and not upon the site of a Gallic city, which would inevitably have yielded tangible proof of its existence in Gaulish coins and other remains. The proportion of Gaulish to Roman coins found in Autun, up to the present time, is about one to fifteen hundred.[16] Further evidence is offered by the fact that the city conforms to the requirements mentioned by Vitruvius at the time of its erection—about fifteen to ten years before the Christian era—that, in building a town, the first necessity is to choose a healthy site, elevated, not subject to fogs, of good temperature, not exposed to extremes of heat and cold, away from marshy land, and facing south or west.[17] One of the chief features of Burgundian towns is the excellence of their sites. This feature, due no doubt, to Roman example, is nowhere more noticeable than at Autun, which remains to-day one of the best situate, and among the most interesting, of all the cities of France.
The first thing to be done, it seems to me, in exploring such a place as Autun, which comprises a mediæval and a modern town within the Enceinte of a Roman city, is to get your bearings, to orient yourself, as the French say.
On the previous evening, looking up from our sunset seat on the grass, beside that mysterious pile known as the Temple of Janus, we had seen, far above the city, to the south-east, on the slope of the hills which enthrone Autun, a gaunt, grey stone lifting its head over the village roofs of Couhard. The next morning found us descending the Rue St. Pancras, into the hollow that lies between the village and the town. As we climbed the ascent, the rising sun gave us alluring glimpses of the mysterious stone, seen through the curling mists of an autumn morning; yet, many a time, we turned from it, to watch the light playing upon ancient wall and tower, and gilding the spire of the cathedral of St. Lazare.
Autun — shewing Cathedral and Mediæval Towers
A bend to the left brought us into Couhard, a straggling group of dishevelled cottages and huts lining the Ruisseau de la Toison, that bubbles merrily along the side of the hill. It is a dilapidated, picturesque, tangled village, given over to ducks and dirt, and to washerwomen, who, like flies in summer, settle upon the running waters of France, to wash their toisons d'or.
"Quite an ancient, conservative, stagnant village," we were saying to ourselves; "built beside a Roman burial ground, and itself going its dirty way to death"—when, suddenly, we made a discovery. Couhard is not conservative. On the contrary, it is advanced. Before us, on a placard, we read: "Association des Femmes de Saône et Loire. Les Femmes doivent Voter." And they tell you there is no feminist movement in France!
Here is the Pierre de Couhard; a gaunt, uncouth, pointed mass of rubble, rising from the hillside, in the midst of a little tangled island—the dust bin of the village—where every ill weed grows. 'Tis a characteristic setting for a Burgundian monument.
But the stone is impressive. Inchoate, formless, it yet suggests a lost form, that of a corpse long-exposed, or of the mysterious, human-inhuman figure, that the mad sculptor, in Andreev's story, hewed out, after he had talked with one returned from the dead, and had gazed deep into death's basilisk eyes.[18]
A close inspection reveals the truth—that the Pierre de Couhard was in the form of a quadrangular pyramid upon a cubical base—the lower part faced with large blocks of sandstone, the pyramidal portion with limestone. All the facing has suffered the usual fate of similar work in France—it formed the quarry from which the peasants of Couhard built and maintained their village. On the south-east side of the pyramid are two holes, bored about the year 1640, with the intention of discovering whether the monument was hollow within.[19] It is now believed to be solid throughout. The Aeduen Society, and others, have undertaken excavations at various times; but local antiquaries have not yet discovered any cella containing coins or relics that determine the date of erection, which, however, M. de Fontenay, with good reason, assigns to the reign of Vespasian (a.d. 69-79).
As to the purpose of the Pierre, there is now little reason to doubt that it was a memorial stone; a supposition borne out, not only by the shape of the monument, but by its position at the summit of the Champs Des Urnes, as it is popularly called, the great burial ground which bordered the Roman road from Lyons to Autun.
Curiously enough, the same opinion was adopted, after a long examination and discussion, by that mighty hunter, and amateur antiquary, Francis I., when he came here, in August, 1521, accompanied by his mother, Louise de Savoie, and by his wife, Claude de France. While the ladies visited the Churches and Convents, which, to them, were the superior attraction, the merry monarch did the round of the Roman monuments, and afterwards restored his jaded faculties with a day's hunting in the neighbouring forest of Planoise, where he lost himself, and might have passed the night in the wilds had he not happened upon the old castle of Porcheresse, whose lord, Celse de Traves, led him back to Autun. The delighted populace, anxious over their lost king, received him with "chiming bells and flaming torches."[20]
Yet, however great the preparations and rejoicings with which the inhabitants received their monarch—as, five years earlier, they had welcomed his predecessor, Charles VIII.—it was neither a flourishing nor a cheerful town that Francis looked down upon, from the Pierre de Couhard, on that summer day, nearly four hundred years ago. He saw the towers, spires, and gables of a mediæval city—one might almost say, of two mediæval cities—built upon the ruins of the much larger Roman town, the silent immensity of whose shattered walls, palaces, temples, and amphitheatre, dwarfed into insignificance the small houses amongst which they stood, and chilled, with a nameless fear, the hearts of those who watched the shadows of evening falling about them, and heard the spirit voices of the past calling, in the moonlight, from among the haunted stones.
"Ou ses temples estoient a chaque coin de vue Les buissons herissez presque y donnent la terreur; Ou les riches palais furent, le laboureur Y couple ses taureaux pour trainer la charrue."[21]
Less fortunate than Dijon and other towns of Burgundy, Autun had suffered a sequence of disasters. When Francis I. saw the town, neither the Roman walls nor the Roman buildings had recovered from the ravages of Tetricus, King of the Gauls, who, about the year 269, after a siege of seven months, sacked Augustodunum, leaving it in such a pitiable condition that the emperor Constantine, when he came from Rome in 310, could not restrain his tears at the sight of the wasted country and ruined towns through which he had passed; nor could the banners of the corporation, the statues of the gods, nor the groups of musicians at the secret corners, blind the emperor to the real poverty hidden beneath official pomp.[22]
There is no better spot than the Pierre de Couhard from which to picture Augustodunum as it was on that day when Constantine rode through the Porte de Rome, now known as the Porte des Marbres, which then stood where the cemetery now abutts on to the end of the Rue de la Jambe de Bois. Thence the main street of the city, the Voie d'Agrippa, bordered by the important and imposing buildings, such as the Temple of Apollo, the Schools, the Forum, and the Capitol, ran in a straight line to the Porte d'Arroux, nearly in the direction of the Temple of Janus, still faintly visible to-day, far away on the plain beyond the river. This Voie d'Agrippa roughly bisected the Roman town, all the streets of which were laid out, like those of a modern American City, either parallel or at right angles to that axial line. Augustodunum, though it lacked the lovely gables, lofty spires, and pleasant disorder of Gothic Autun, must yet have shown to the traveller looking back from the road to Rome, a splendid pile of temples and palaces and gardens, as his glance wandered from the gleaming marble gates, and the flashing dome of the Capitol, to the majestic arches and sculptured columns and colonnades of the great arena and lovely theatre, whose ruins are yet seen through the avenue of lime trees, above the ivy-crowned stones of the ancient enceinte.[23]
Lovely is this spectacle, even to-day. On the left, to the south-west, the mediæval city, the Castrum, lifts its pile of gabled, palace roofs above the sombre firs, and line of bronzed fortresses, walls, and leaf-clad towers that mark the Roman enceinte. Higher yet, over all, the spires and pinnacles of the cathedral of St. Lazare glitter against the background of hills.
On the way back, our attention was divided between the glories of that view, and the "chasse aux poules" or chicken hunt—the one form of sport indulged in by the old ladies of a Burgundian village.
A very few hours in Autun were enough to reveal the fact that this largest Gallo-Roman city of Burgundy contains Roman remains as interesting as any in France, known to me, excepting those of Nimes, Orange, and Arles; while, around two of them—the Temple of Janus[24] and the Pierre de Couhard—there still lingers an element of mystery that renders them doubly attractive to the curious mind.
The "Temple de Janus" lies, as the reader will remember, at the foot of Autun, in the meadow beside the Arroux. Its original purpose is doubtful. M. Viollet le Duc held it to be a Fort Détaché, built outside the ramparts, for the purpose of barring the passage of the river, and commanding the plain.[25] M. de Fontenay, on the other hand, asserts,—and I venture to think proves,—that the building was not designed for military purposes, and was, in fact, a temple; though there is no evidence to tell us to which deity it was dedicated.[26]
M. le Duc contends that the tower had no door on the ground floor, and was entered by means of a ladder; but one of the features that first strike any observer who is endeavouring mentally to reconstruct the building, is, that, along both remaining walls, between the lower openings and the upper windows, run two lines of rectangular holes pierced in the masonry. The purpose of those holes, was, undoubtedly, to carry the roof timbers of a peristyle, or outer gallery, whose foundations have been unearthed at a distance of between five and six metres from the main wall,—a discovery which seems at once to demolish M. le Duc's theory of entry by ladder. The design of the peristyle is not known, nor the order of its architecture; but it probably took the ordinary form of a stylobate, or base, columns with capitals supporting an entablature, and a sloping roof. The niches on the interior sides of the walls, and the traces of red colouring—a mixture of powdered brick and chalk, still easily visible in their more protected parts—are further evidence that the tower was indeed a temple.
M. de Fontenay dates the building, conjecturally, from the founding of Autun. Concerning its popular name, "Temple of Janus," he has some very interesting information to give.
It appears that, until the 17th century, the tower was known as the "Tour de la Gênetoie," a term which a local savant took to be a corruption of Janitect, "à Jani tecto." This legend was accepted by the historians for about the next two centuries, until, in 1843, another Burgundian writer reluctantly announced the truth,—that Gênetoie did not mean "Temple of Janus," but simply, "Champ des balkins" or "genets," the broom known to all Englishmen as the device of our Plantagenet kings. So much for the Temple of Janus. Whatever may have been its purpose, no one who has visited Rome, looking up at the huge, shattered walls, gilded by the sunset, standing out against the purple shadows of the hills far away across the plain, can fail to recall memories of the Roman Campagna.
The Roman city of Augustodunum possessed four gates, at the north-west, north-east, south-west, and south-east corners of the town, leading to the roads for Boulogne, Besançon, Bourbon L'Archambaud, and Lyons respectively. The first and last of these was known also as the "Voie d'Agrippa." The gates, taking them in the same order, are known as the Porte d'Arroux, the Porte St. André, the Porte St. Andoche, and the Porte de Rome. The first two of these are still standing; the others have disappeared.
The Porte d'Arroux is distant only a few minutes walk from the Temple of Janus, near the river, at the foot of the Faubourg d'Arroux. Incomplete though it is, the grace and dignity of the fallen monument yet contrast strongly with the squalor of its setting. It is backed, on either side, by a medley of disreputable villas, and dilapidated, half-timbered cottages, whose squalor is not without charm. To-day hordes of ragged children play beneath the arches that once echoed to the roll of chariot wheels, and to the tramp of lictors' feet.
The Porte d'Arroux has four openings for traffic,—two large central arches, by which chariots could pass in and out, and two smaller gates, at the sides, for foot passengers. Each of the central arches is grooved for a portcullis, which some authorities, including M. Viollet le Duc, think were not added till the middle ages,[27] a supposition that M. de Fontenay seems effectually to disprove by pointing out that, since the Roman rampart at that period was broken down in many places, any additional defences to the gates would have been a useless precaution.
Autun, in mediæval times, comprised what were, in effect, two distinct towns, both built within the Roman enceinte. These were the Castrum, the centre of which was the Cathedral of St. Lazare, and the Marchaux—still known by the same name,—in the lower part of the town, north of the Place des Champs de Mars. Each of these towns was then sheltered within its own walls and towers, of which portions are still in existence.
The upper part of the gate consisted of a pierced gallery or arcade, of ten bays,—seven of them still intact,—forming a Chemin de Ronde, on a level with that running along the crest of the Roman wall. This gallery, serving the double purpose of ornament and defence, could be closed at any time by wooden shutters.[28] The gate was flanked on either side by two rectangular towers (corps de garde) with semi-circular apses projecting far beyond it, as though—in the phrase of Eumenes, a local historian and orator of the late 3rd and early 4th centuries—they were stretching out welcoming arms to those about to enter the town.[29]
All who are interested in the development of Burgundian architecture, should give careful attention to the Porte d'Arroux, which is certainly the source of one of the most marked characteristics of the style,—the use of the fluted pilasters, which, for some reason or other, seem to have struck the fancy of the architects of this part of France. We shall see this arcade imitated closely in the triforium gallery of the cathedral of St. Lazare, and also influencing, in turn, the churches of Cluny, Paray le Monial, Notre Dame de Beaune, and others.
The masonry of the gate is very finely executed, with close joints, without mortar, in the manner of the period, and is, on the whole, in a wonderfully good state of preservation. The lower part of the work is quite plain. The archivolts, the entablature, including the architrave and the frieze, show little ornament; the cornice, however, is richly decorated with dentals, palmettes and other designs, as is also the remaining fragment of cornice above the arcade, whose fluted pilasters have beautiful capitals in the Corinthian style.
The other surviving Roman gate,—the Porte St. André,—is on the north-east boundary of the city, not far from the Porte d'Arroux, by way of the Faubourg Arroux and the Rue de la Croix Blanche. It is less picturesquely situate, and, though very similar, is distinctly inferior to its neighbour in design and finish. The central arches are lower, and heavier, while the gallery lacks the lightness and grace which are characteristic of the Porte d'Arroux, and is, moreover, built in a stone darker and less pleasing to the eye than the oolithic limestone of the lower portion.
M. de Fontenay suggests that this upper part was restored at some later and degenerate period of Roman architecture. Certainly the plain pilasters are badly designed and carelessly set, while the capitals, of a composite, semi-ionic order, appear to be too narrow for their pilasters—not too wide, as stated by M. de Fontenay, and also by M. Déchelette in his careful little guide to Autun. The Porte St. André shows no signs of having been fitted with a portcullis. Hamerton[30] states, no doubt correctly, that the door was barred by strong beams inserted into holes and grooves. These are still visible.
The Porte St. André, it should be noted, is one of the most complete Roman gates existing in France. The lower portion of one of the flanking towers, which rose originally several feet above the attic story of the gate, owes its escape from destruction to its shape, which, coinciding with that of a typical Romanesque chapel, tempted certain ecclesiastics of the middle ages, to dedicate it to St. André, as a place for Christian worship.[31] These flanking towers comprised three stories. The first communicated with the Chemin de Ronde, along the crest of the walls, the second was a vaulted chamber, and the third remained open to the sky. Access was obtained by a double staircase.
On the question of the period during which these gates were built, M. de Fontenay and Viollet le Duc are again at variance,—the latter attributing them to the fourth or fifth centuries,[32] the former to the reign of Vespasian (a.d. 69-79).[33] Strange as it may seem that another writer should contradict continually so eminent an authority as the last-named, the author of "Autun et ses Monuments" again has reason on his side, since he can refer to the orator Eumenes as describing the gates in the year 311 a.d.
Moreover, since the Roman walls were admittedly broken down in many places during the siege by Tetricus, in the year 269 a.d.,—an event of which Eumenes was a witness,—and the inhabitants were already beginning to retire within the safer precincts of the Citadel; what would be the reason for erecting elaborate gates on the line of the ruined wall? I am not an authority upon ancient architecture; but I was certainly astonished to read the date given in the "Dictionnaire Raisonné"; and I should be glad to know whether other experts support M. le Duc's theory.
Of the two other gates—the Porte St. Andoche, on the south-west, and the Porte de Rome on the south-east, in the direction of Lyons,—nothing remains except the rectangular portion of one of the lateral towers of the former. The loss of the Porte de Rome, or the "Porte des Marbres," as it was popularly called, is especially to be regretted, since that name alone suggests the truth, of which evidence exists, that it was by far the most beautiful of the four. Moreover, it has additional historic interest as being the gate by which Constantine entered Autun in 311.
The old writers agree in describing the Porte des Marbres as a thing of beauty,—a quality which was its undoing, as offering an irresistible attraction to the Mediæval and later builders. Several ancient Corinthian capitals, not otherwise easily accounted for, are to be seen to-day in the porch of the cathedral built at the close of the 12th century. It appears, indeed, that around the present site of the Fountain of the Pelican was a burial ground named Les Marbres, on account of its richness in borrowed sculpture. The site of the gate was known from the 14th century onwards as "à Marbres" or "de Marboribus." At the time of the construction of the bastion of the Jambe de Bois, the workmen unearthed many marbles, including columns, capitals, and bases of the Corinthian or some composite order.[34] The date of the final destruction of the Porte des Marbres is uncertain; but its flanking towers, then known as the Fors de Marboribus, were still standing in the middle of the 14th century.
Before beginning another chapter, let me speak one word of warning. If you ask one of the humbler inhabitants of Autun where the Porte St. Andoche stood, you will be directed, without hesitation,—as we were,—to the bank of the river, near the railway station. Having reached that spot and crossed the bridge, you will obtain a lovely view of the Roman wall and the river beside it, but will fail to find the remaining tower of the gate, for the reason that it is not there. The Porte St. Andoche stood at the foot of the Boulevard Schneider, opposite to the Couvent du Sacrement, on the road leading, by way of the enceinte, to the Tour des Ursulines.
The reader may ask why the peasants should misdirect him? They misdirect him, in this particular instance, because they believe that the gate really stood on the town side of the western bridge of the Arroux, in the corresponding position to that of the Porte d'Arroux. But my point is, that, had your informant been utterly ignorant of the supposed whereabouts of the gate, he would, very probably, have directed you with almost equal facility. The Burgundian peasant is very ignorant; but he is also very proud,—much too proud to admit that he does not know the whereabouts of a monument that a stranger has come, perhaps, a thousand miles to visit. His swift imagination, therefore, promptly creates the site; and he, or she, will tell you promptly, volubly, and with much circumstantial detail, exactly how to get there. In this snare we have been taken many times during our travels among the Burgundians. The Provençals have a different and preferable method. They do not invent a site for the monument; they deny its existence. Speaking with some experience of the peculiar ways of the French peasant in such matters, my advice to the gentle stranger is—not to trust him. Get the best guide and map that you can find in the local librairie; and rely on them, and on your own intelligence. You may then, when you are at fault, consult the passer by as to details, letting your judgment decide whether, in his particular case, he is to be trusted.
If it be a Château that you are seeking, you must be doubly careful. To a French peasant many a tiny cottage is a "fine house" (belle maison), and almost every modern house, of any pretentions at all, is a château. To us, on the contrary, a château means a castle; usually an ancient one.
Many a time has a blue-shirted peasant looked up from his work by the road side, to address me somewhat as follows:
"The Château de Bon Espoir; Certainly, Monsieur, 'tis there, three kilometres away, up the hill, tout droit en montant."[35]
We climb the three kilometres, wander about for an hour, and return disconsolate. The labourer, hearing the whirr of bicycle wheels, looks up again.
"M'sieur et Dame have found the Château?"
"No, Monsieur. They told us up there that the ancient Château de Bon Espoir was on the other side of the valley to the north."
"Oh! that one? That's only an old ruin. I thought you meant the château de Monsieur Pigot."
"No. Who is Monsieur Pigot?"
"Monsieur Pigot, 'Sieur Dame, is the proprietor of the grand magasin du Louvre at Paris. He has a lovely château, up there where you went. They would have let you in if you had gone up the drive."
"We are sorry we missed it. Good day, Monsieur."
The "lovely château" was a terrible erection of red brick and stone, defiling the landscape for a mile around.
Footnotes:
[10] De Bello Gallico, lib. 1, cap. 23: "Bibracte, by far the finest and largest town of the Aedui."
[11] I refer all who want full details of the period to M. Camille Jullian's book "Histoire de la Gaule," and to Mm. de Fontenay and de Charmasse's "Autun et ses Monuments avec un précis historique," a very useful book obtainable at the "Libraire Dujessieu" at Autun.
[12] The battle took place probably near Montmort, about 5 kilometres north of Toulon.
[13] De Bell: Gall: lib. i, cap. 15: "Autun et ses Monuments," p. 12.
[14] "Ille enim revocatus resistere, ac se manu defendere—saepe claimitans liberum se liberaque civitatis esse." Cæsar de Bell. Gall. lib. v. cap. 7; "Autun et ses Monuments," p. 19.
[15] "Autun et ses Monuments," Précis Historique, p.27.
[16] "Autun et ses Monuments," p. 8.
[17] "Autun et ses Monuments," pp. 8 and 9.
[18] See "Lazarus" in "Judas Iscariot" by Andreev.
[19] "Autun et ses Monuments," pp. 216-232.
[20] "Autun et ses Monuments," "Précis Historique," p. 206-7.
[21] François Perrier, poet of the 16th century, quoted in "Autun et ses Monuments," from the Mémoires of the Société Eduenne.
[22] Ibid, p. 71-73.
[23] See the interesting map of the Roman City in "Autun et ses Monuments." Roman Autun was sacked again by the Saracens in 731 a.d.; the havoc on that occasion being even more complete than that wrought by Tetricus.
[24] "Dictionnaire Raisonné," Tome 9, p. 68.
[25] "Dictionnaire Raisonné," Tome 9, p. 68.
[26] "Autun et ses Monuments," pp. 216-232.
[27] "Dictionnaire Raisonné," Tome vii., p. 214. Note I.
[28] "Dictionnaire Raisonné," Tome vii., p. 314.
[29] "Autun et ses Monuments," p. 36.
[30] P. G. Hamerton, The Mount, p. 190.
[31] Déchelette, "Guide des Monuments d'Autun," p. 10.
[32] "Dictionnaire Raisonné," Tome vii., p. 314.
[33] "Autun et ses Monuments," p. 46.
[34] "Autun et ses Monuments," pp. cliv., 45 and 414.
[35] Straight ahead as you go up.
[CHAPTER III]
Leaving the Hotel St. Louis, about which I shall have more to say later on, and passing along the Rue de l'Arquebus, you emerge upon an open space, where stands a statue to a Gaulish chieftain with whom we have already made acquaintance—the Druid, Divitiacus.
It may be heresy on my part, but I must admit that I have very little sympathy with the French passion for erecting statues of known or unknown persons, in every public place, quite irrespective of any ulterior considerations, such as whether such a monument is in any way expressive of the celebrity's particular talent or genius, or whether modern garments in carved stone are desirable in a "Place," often bordered with the most beautiful examples of Gothic or Renaissance architecture.
Many an open space in the ancient cities of France might have been spared such an indignity, had the French people cared to remember that, in the absence of a more worthy memorial—such as a house that can be lived in—a wall-tablet is sufficient for all practical purposes. M. Emile Montégut, in his "Souvenirs de Bourgogne," has very justly satirized the French idiosyncracy; but France in general, and Burgundy in particular, still bristles with unnecessary statues.
The memorial of Divitiacus, however, is an exception to the general rules, for the figure is a successful and spirited piece of work, showing the Druid, bareheaded, pointing down the Roman Road. His helmet lies at his feet, and he carries a shield on which a battle scene is engraved. The figure stands upon a historic site; for here, on the west side of the Voie d'Agrippa, joining gate with gate, stood three of the most important buildings of the Roman city,—the Temple of Apollo, the Schools, and the Capitol.
The Aedui had always conceived of Apollo as surrounded by the Muses. He was their God of poetry, of youth, of joy, of prosperity, and of beauty; he was the healer and enlightener; to him the woods and streams were consecrated in the days
"When holy were the haunted forest boughs, Holy the air, the water, and the fire;"
In the third century the Healer was already the most venerated of the Roman divinities in the hierarchy of Augustodunum, and his temple was probably the most important of them all, until 270, when it fell, with many another Roman temple and palace, before the hordes of Tetricus.
The Emperor Constantius Chlorus, however, decided that the temples should rise again; and it appears, from the records of Eumenes, that, by the end of the third century, the house of "Apollo Noster" was restored to more than its former beauty. The house was restored; but not the cult. Influences more powerful than the decree of Constance Chlore, or of Constantine, were at work within the Roman city. Every year, meaner gifts were offered, fewer vows were made before the Temple of Apollo; every year more citizens—at first in fearful secrecy, later with open enthusiasm—worshipped the Carpenter of Nazareth.
Excavations have revealed the substructure of the circular building which is generally accepted as having been the Temple of Apollo. The character of the remains, shewing that strings of bricks were used in the construction of the building,[36] point to the reign of Constantius Chlorus, or of his son Constantine,[37] as the probable date. Readers familiar with the Roman buildings of Arles, will recognise the same architectural feature in the Palace of Constantine in that town.
The great schools of Autun, the Ecoles Méniennes, as they were called, were probably situate between the Temple of Apollo and the Capitol, just below the site of the present Sous-préfeture. They appear to have been well known throughout the Roman Empire; for Tacitus[38] mentions the capital of the Aedui as a place where the children of the Gaulish nobility were wont to apply themselves eagerly to the study of the liberal arts, while Eumenes speaks of them as "a sanctuary consecrated to instruction and eloquence, a very home of literature; for," says he, "the study of letters is the foundation of all the virtues; they are, indeed, a school of temperance, of modesty, of vigilance, of patience; and when all these virtues are implanted as a habit in the heart of childhood, they penetrate, like a vigorous sap, all the functions of civil life, and even those which seem to be in opposition to it, I mean the charges and duties of military life."[39]
Many men, celebrated in their day, must have attended these schools, which seem to have retained their popularity well into the third century, though, at the time of their destruction in the catastrophy of 270 a.d., they may, perhaps, have been living, to a certain extent, upon their past glories. We do not know much concerning their architecture; but Eumenes says they were known as a monument of imposing beauty, and adds this interesting detail—that "the buildings were surrounded by galleries or porticos, in which the students could see every day the extent of all the lands and of all the seas, the towns restored by the good-will of the invincible emperors, the nations conquered by their valour, and the barbarous countries chained by the terror of their arms. There were shewn the name and situation of each country, its extent, its relative distance, the source and outfall of each river, the windings of the banks, and the circuits of the sea which washes the continents and the shores of the countries swept by its impetuous movement. The whole universe was there pictured. There were to be seen the two rivers of Persia, the parched regions of Lybia, the joined branches of the Rhine, and the many mouths of the Nile."[40]
The schools had been named after these galleries, on whose walls or ceilings the young nobles of Gaul could learn all that was known of the world of their day, that is to say, the whole of the Roman Empire. Maeniana,—in French, Ménienne,—means a construction projecting from the front of an edifice, an exterior gallery or balcony, which appears to have been so common a characteristic of the schools of Augustodunum, that the term Maeniana came to be applied to them generally.[41]
In 270 a.d. the schools suffered the general fate, and the scholars, henceforth, had to be accommodated in separate quarters. Eumenes talked of restoring the porticos, and repainting the map of the world; but, probably, the work was never carried out, and the schools remained in their shattered state, even after the adjoining buildings—the Temple of Apollo and the Capitol—had been restored to something of their former glory.
The Capitol was probably the building whose foundations, circular on plan, have been traced to the garden of the Hospice St. Gabriel, beside the Ecoles Méniennes, and fronting also upon the great central street leading from gate to gate. Authorities appear to have differed considerably on this point; but many Corinthian capitals, fragments of entablatures, statuettes, groups of goddesses, etc., have been found on this site, suggesting that it was once occupied by a building of great importance,[42] decorated as one would expect of such a temple, and dedicated, as the Capitol was, to the principal divinities of the official hierarchy. Eumenes, moreover, states that the Capitol was situate beside the schools. M. de Fontenay, however, thinks that, possibly, the Capitol may have occupied the other circular site, now attributed to the Temple of Apollo; and, conversely, that the latter building should be placed below the schools.
Not far from this centre of Roman civilization, beyond the shady plantation of plane trees, the Promenade des Marbres, dotted with seats of Roman stone, and stretching eastward from the statue of Divitiacus, you will find, if you follow the Faubourg des Marbres, on the right side of the downward slope, a board with the legend "Caves Joyaux." Then, turning up the path to the right, passing a hideous modern cottage devoted principally to "tir," from the walls of which the counterfeit presentments of dead citizens look out stonily upon you from the Roman stele, you will come upon a grassy, semi-circular terrace, planted with lime trees, whose green banks slope down towards a smaller semi-circle of sward below.
Beyond it lies a broad expanse of allotment garden, in which peasant women are bending over their crops. Standing among the leaves, that, on this bright autumn day, are fluttering upon the grass, and looking down more closely into the semi-circle, one observes irregularities in the surface of the horseshoe, lines suggestive of terracing; strangely shaped, hollow, grassy boulders that seem to have shouldered their way up from below. Here, at the end of the curve, is a mass of broken stone; there a black shadow below the revealed head of an arch projecting from the weed-entangled débris.
The reader will have guessed his whereabouts. This is, or was, the Roman theatre. Upon those heavy shoulders rested the marble seats; there were the entrances and exits by which the spectators passed to and from the staircases and corridors. From the flat semi-circle below us, the chorus chanted their melodious comments upon the play that was being enacted on the stage where now the women are at work.
There are those who will tell you that the Theatre is not worth the trouble of a visit,—that it has lost all charm. I cannot agree. On the contrary, ruined though the monument is, hardly one stone of it left upon another, there is nothing more impressive to be seen in Autun; for the general contour of the building is so preserved, that, for any person in the least degree familiar with the forms of these monuments, no great effort of the imagination is needed to restore the play-house to some of its ancient glory, and to re-people it with the voices of the past. Moreover, the spectator, though he cannot see the graceful columns, that, probably, as at Arles, rose from the back of the stage, nor the sculptured frieze, nor the marble capitals and statues that adorned the proscenium, nor the arcaded gallery that crowned the upper rows of seats, though he may not follow with the eye the distant white roads of Vesentio and Agrippa; yet still his glance can range over the same landscape that met the Roman of old, the near fields and meadows, the distant uplands and gloomy forest lit by the rising sun.
Still more impressive must the theatre be, when moonlight has shed her revealing mystery over the terraces of this forsaken garden.
Tradition has it, that, until the latter part of the 17th century, a considerable portion of the Roman theatre was still standing; and M. de Fontenay gives a very interesting sketch of the ruins in 1610, showing that soil and débris had not then obliterated the tiers of seats, and that the fore-part and the arcaded gallery of the semi-circle were still in existence.[43] This comparatively happy condition of affairs might have endured until to-day, but for an unfortunate temptation that overcame Gabriel de Roquette, Bishop of Autun, in 1675, to make use of the Roman theatre as a quarry for the new seminary he was building. It was a deed doubly inexcusable, because, at so late a period, after the publication of Eden Thomas' book, and others dealing with the subject, he had no longer the commonly-urged excuse that no interest was taken in the ancient monuments of Autun.[44] It is quite possible, however, that we are blaming the bishop needlessly. After the fate of Cluny, who shall say of what a Frenchman is not capable, when the lust of destruction is upon him?
The theatre of Autun was 147m.80. in diameter, the largest in Gaul, and the fourth largest of the known buildings of the kind; coming immediately after that of Bacchus at Athens, and those of Ephesus and Smyrna.[45] The orchestra was paved in red marble, and the stage lined with white marble veined with red.
The exterior arcades of the hemi-cycle were formed of large blocks, the space between ornamented with pateræ. Anfert's, the oldest description we have, dating from the 17th century, mentions that the circumference of the theatre is broken by several chambers and subterranean passages; these chambers are vaulted; they are seven or eight feet wide, and known as "Caves Jolliot."[46]
This brings us back to the legend "Caves Joyaux," which greeted our approach to the theatre. Up to the end of the 16th century, the remains appear to have been known as the "Grotto" (Grottes), an interesting example of the extraordinary vulgarity of popular nomenclature. Later, a certain worthy Autunois, whose line of business has not come down to us with his name, decided that these vaulted chambers would suit him excellently as a domicile. No doubt his venture proved successful, for the Grotto soon became known as the "Cellier Jolyot," or "Caves Jolyot," a name which, in the form of "Caves Joyaux," still passes current among the vulgar of Autun.[47] This is by no means the first time that the substructure of a Roman monument has been dubbed "cellars" by an indiscriminating public.
For us the Roman theatre was more than a historic relic,—it was our favourite lunching place in Autun! However severe a shock the admission may be to some of my readers, I admit boldly, that never, during all our travels in France, do we, if we can avoid it, lunch either in restaurant or hotel. To go twice a day, with credit, through the six courses of a French déjeuner and dinner, is a gastronomic effort of which we confess ourselves wholly incapable; consequently, before setting forth on our day's excursion, we may be seen passing into the épicerie, boulangerie, or other boutique of the village street, whence, our pockets bulging with sundry small paper parcels, we emerge, amid the not wholly disinterested curiosity of all the old ladies who have been eyeing us from door and window during our journey down the street.
The custom of picnic lunches is one that I recommend to all travellers in Burgundy, including those to whom the saving of a five-pound note, at the end of a month's holiday, is a matter of no moment whatever. The Burgundians feed more richly, perhaps, than any other people of Europe, and their dinners, like the country's monuments—rich rather than dainty—need a healthy appetite to do them justice. Further, the secrecy that these picnic methods necessarily involve—for you cannot proclaim your intention to a maître d'hôtel, whose luncheon tables groan beneath their burden of good things appointed for you to eat,—will titillate deliciously the insatiable curiosity of the lady his wife, who passes hours in wondering where and how you lunched.
"Monsieur et Dame will not be in to lunch to-day?"
"No, Madame."
"Monsieur et Dame were not in to lunch yesterday."
"No, Madame." A pause, during which our hostess, screwing up her courage for the plunge, eyed us with a glance, half-timid, half-amused.
"Where did Monsieur et Dame lunch yesterday?" The speaker looked at my wife; my wife looked at me. I looked innocently at Madame.
"On a wall, Madame." Madame's eyebrows rose slightly. She could make nothing of it.
"But it was raining all day yesterday, Monsieur!"
"Not on the wall, Madame. The fact is, we never lunch at an hotel—even when it rains."
"Vous faites bien" was what she said to us. What she said to her husband, an hour later, I leave to the reader to guess. But we parted excellent friends.
These picnic lunches, of course, are rather scrappy. Things get blown away sometimes, or are fastened upon by ants. Il faut souffrir pour bien vivre.
While I have been writing these notes, my wife has left the bench of Roman stone that is our table, and is seated on the grass half way down towards the orchestra, where she is exercising her not inconsiderable powers of imagination in recreating the traditions of the spot. Also she is proving, unwittingly, the excellent acoustic properties of the natural theatre, constructed in the Greek, rather than in the Roman method; that is to say, by hollowing out of the hill, not building up upon the plain. The keeper of the buvette told us that a play is to be given in the theatre next June (1911) and "a little bull-fight."
Going back to the hotel that day, we noticed, among the crisp leaves of the Promenade des Marbres, many a handful of confetti,—souvenirs of the great fair or festival of St. Lazare, that, for nearly the whole of September, disturbs the tranquillity of Autun. Let the traveller, therefore, see the Roman city before September, or after it.
The stone benches beneath the trees of the Promenade des Marbres, placed there about 1765, appear to have been taken from another of the most important Roman monuments of Autun, the Amphitheatre, a building which, in the middle ages, was known by the same name as its neighbour, the Theatre, and suffered a similar fate. It was situate to the north of the Caves Joyaux, close to the wall of the town, in such a position that the Faubourg des Marbres nearly bisects its site. Not very much is known concerning it; but its dimensions have been determined by excavations that prove it to have been the largest of the known amphitheatres of France, as it is of Burgundy as a whole.
Here are the figures, compared with those of the Arènes of Arles and Nimes, both of which still exist.[48]
Large diameter.
Small diameter.
Autun 154 metres
130 metres.
Arles 140 metres.28
103 metres.20.
Nimes 135 metres.27
105 metres.87.
| Large diameter. | Small diameter. | |
| Autun | 154 metres | 130 metres. |
| Arles | 140 metres.28 | 103 metres.20. |
| Nimes | 135 metres.27 | 105 metres.87. |
M. de Fontenay publishes in his work, a drawing which shows that, in 1610, there remained of the amphitheatre two parallel, vaulted arcades; but he does not venture on an attempt to reconstruct the building. It appears that, by the 18th century, all trace of the construction had vanished, except the oval site, which, being at a lower level than the surrounding land, is still popularly known as the Crot-Volu (Creux Volu), the latter name being that of a 14th century family who occupied part of it.[49] One of the most significant discoveries made among the ruins was that of the skull of a lion, probably the victim of a gladiator. It is supposed that the amphitheatre was built contemporaneously with the theatre, and, in the year of the siege, suffered the same fate.
A walk round the quiet roads and avenues of this outlying portion of Autun, and half an hour spent on the grassy slopes of the theatre, cannot fail to impress the most casual observer with a sense of the grandeur and extent of the Roman city. Modern Autun is a town of respectable dimensions; but here, within the Roman Enceinte, the few dwelling houses stand isolated among their own gardens; and ancient, immemorial trees cast their shadows over quiet spots once resounding with the hum and rumour of Roman life.
All those who would visualize Burgundian history will be grateful that, in spite of the destructive enmity of her foes, and the scarcely less destructive ignorance and folly of certain of her inhabitants, enough of Augustodunum is left to enable us to group round her our mental pictures of this part of Gallo-Roman Burgundy.
Footnotes:
[36] "Autun et ses Monuments," p. 151.
[37] Constantius Chlorus died 306 a.d. Constantine reigned from 306-337.
[38] "Autun et ses Monuments," p. 160.
[39] Ibid, p. 161.
[40] "Autun et ses Monuments," p. 165.
[41] Ibid, p. 167.
[42] Ibid, pp. 152-158.
[43] "Autun et ses Monuments." Facing p. 181.
[44] "Autun et ses Monuments," p. 183.
[45] Ibid, p. 189.
[46] "Autun et ses Monuments," p. 181.
[47] "Autun et ses Monuments," pp. 178-179.
[48] "Autun et ses Monuments," p. 193.
[49] Ibid, p. 196.
