There is a fine “Établissement des Bains” near our hôtel, supplied by the river, but before you go thither, do not, as I did, walk in view of the filthy buildings which hang over the Somme, as the muddy water causes disagreeable associations, particularly as it also washes the walls of the church in the principal street, now converted into a splendid hospital.
I have said nothing of the Cathedral, yet there we have passed the greater portion of our time; and for its sake remain three days at Amiens. Its foundations were laid in 1220, when Everard was Bishop of Amiens, and Louis the Eighth King of France. Excepting its towers, it was finished about 1288.
415 feet long within, 132 in height, its proportions are so perfect, that its size fails to strike, except by comparison. I was made aware of it only by looking at a human figure in the aisle. What a pity that bad taste should have covered a great part of the carved stone work, and several tombs in the chapels, with painted and gilt wainscotings! Among the latter, one in black marble of the churchman who united Isabella of Bavaria, of infamous memory, to Charles the Sixth, the royal maniac. The gilding of the altar, railings, &c. was lately renewed by the testamentary donation of an Englishman, who, together with his wife and family, embraced the Catholic religion here. They were converted, the landlady tells me, by the wife of the English clergyman! who herself had abjured protestantism shortly before!! The little angel, who beside the kneeling figure of a bishop weeps behind the high altar, was so prized by the English, that it is said they offered to purchase him for his weight in gold. He sits with his head leaned on his hand, and his legs hung carelessly down—an image of all-absorbing sorrow. The monument was an offering of gratitude from its sculptor to the memory of the prelate who had been his patron; but why an ill-executed figure of the Virgin is placed so close as to spoil the effect, no one can tell.
The organ is voiceless still, notwithstanding the 40,000 francs spent this year on its repair.
As we are to leave Amiens in the morning, we returned to the Cathedral after dinner, as I wished, in company of its Suisse, to walk round it once more—but that this man is straight, and has two eyes, he might be the original of Quasimodo. We were too early, and staid outside to look again at the three beautiful porches, deeply sunk in the noble façade, among whose multitude of carved saints innumerable birds have built their nests, in cavities made by decapitated heads, and limbs wanting; they were flying about in quantities. As we entered, the priest was about to conclude his evening sermon; we waited its close, and I thought I had not seen the cathedral to advantage before. The weather was burning and cloudless; and while the coloured rosace of the transept opposite us looked deeper and richer, because, not fronting the west, it admitted no sunbeams; they came through a side window, and the whole cross aisle was a flood of light: roof, columns, and arches illuminated in all their details; and the figure of Fenelon’s friend, half reclined on his tomb, seemed about to start up. Through the stained glass of the large rose above the organ, and the smaller one on each side, the glory from the west streamed in likewise, brightening the gay dresses of the still congregation, and the bare head of the energetic priest, and the pulpit, supported by the three Cardinal Virtues, and surmounted by an angel whose foot seems hardly to rest on its roof, and whose hand points upward. You would have moralized on the Virtues cowering in shadow, and the winged form above them (like their emanation) floating in splendour.
The Suisse came to conduct us: his pride seemed centered in the cathedral, and in the study of its walls he says he has passed wakeful nights. The two bronzed monuments, hardly raised from the floor to right and left of the principal entrance, a human figure rudely outlined on each, are those of the founder Everard and his successor Godefroy.
Walking up the left-hand aisle, the Suisse pointed to the Crucifix Miraculeux: it is of the seventh century, clad in long gilded robes, wearing an expression, not of pain, but triumph; such being the mode of representing the Saviour before the time of Charlemagne. The miracle on which rests its fame consists in a change of lodging it one night effected, for it was originally placed in a chapel on the right of the nave. Why it preferred one opposite, the tradition does not tell.
Here, where the transept crosses the nave, is the tomb of the ambassador who negotiated peace between Francis the First of France and the Emperor Charles. The emblematical figures are those of Force wresting a Salamander from the grasp of Peace—Francis paid tribute. An altar opposite, erected during a plague, conceals the monument of a bishop, who, holding the see of Amiens at the period of the battle of Crecy, received and sheltered Philip of Valois. A pavement stone in the transept marks the grave of Gresset. The chapel near contains, in a superb reliquary, a piece of the skull of John the Baptist! and each time we have visited the cathedral, we have seen the same old lady kneeling before it, in immovable devotion. The curious stone screen raised outside the choir represents the various events of John the Baptist’s life; the small figures, though rudely drawn, have great expression; arches, canopies and pinnacles, carved above them in the same stone, form a light and beautiful frame. Formerly this screen surrounded the choir; the taste of Louis the Fifteenth’s time substituted the gilt bronze railing. The Suisse stopped a moment to admire the weeping cherub and criticise (not unskilfully) a beautiful Virgin, carved by the same hand, in the chapel, behind the high altar. A few steps further, the pavement stones for a considerable space are marked each with a deeply carved cross. It would seem that here, during the religious wars, there once took place a conflict between Huguenots and Catholics, in which many of the latter died. The pavement of the transept has one grave-stone more near the side entrance to the right; the initials it bears are H. T. (Hernand Teillo), for he was buried here; and it was of him that Henry the Fourth, viewing his small armour, said, “I had not believed so mighty a spirit could be lodged so narrowly!”
The carving of the screen, the canons’ seats, &c. of the choir, as they are celebrated for their beauty, we wished to see nearer; but their exhibition did not lie in our cicerone’s department—he went in search of a fat woman who has the key in charge. “Monsieur,” he said, smiling as he presented her, “c’est la dame du cœur!”
The sculptor of this fairy-work was by agreement bound to sacred subjects; and only an oversight left to his own taste the adorning of the wood-work which divides the canons’ seats. The artist was acquainted with their persons and histories; and when his task was done, each found his elbow resting on an indiscreet allusion to his life or himself. Some chafed over their own grotesque portraits; a meek looking young ass dressed in canonicals gazed sympathetically in the face of another; and the most unkindly treated of all beheld his own figure in a contrite attitude, his own hands receiving an infant from the hands of a lady! We staid in the cathedral till the daylight failed; and the high roof looked loftier when we could barely distinguish where it rested on the groups of slender columns. It will be long ere we forget its beauty, and the beautiful changes of its aspect; from the time its three portals thrown open after evening service admitted the whole flood of sunset, which lit it up as for a rejoicing, till the glow had faded; which it did so slowly, as if it had been loth to leave it.