From Chalons to Sennecey, two posts; a long fertile plain bounded by hills; to the left, in the distance, the Swiss mountains. The only sights at dirty Sennecey, a horridly gigantic head grinning with its tongue out, transplanted from some fountain to the wall of the first house, and a very old fort at its extremity, within whose walls the parish church has been lately erected. The extensive plain which again succeeds is skirted by nearer and wooded hills, whose shade, as we ascended them, made a pleasant contrast to the burning, treeless flat below. We let poor Fanny drink from a clear stream gushing forth at the foot, over which has been built a neat lavoir. As we walked the horses up the steep, the view bespoke more comfort and plenty than does any part of France I have yet travelled. Green meadows and fruit trees in flower, and villages dotting valley and rising ground, reminded me of England; from the summit the prospect was enchanting. The descent before us was rapid, and a few crags made a bold foreground, as did the Swiss mountains a splendid distance. Tournus rose in the plain, with its old church towers and grey abbey, and suspended bridge across the Saône, whose shores, seen for many a mile of its windings, merit their name of “bords fleuris.” This is one of the very best inns we have yet rested in; close to the bridge and the river; in all respects superior to its rival, the Sauvage, which is at the entrance of the town in a dull and dirty situation: but, as it pays postilions at a ruinous rate, attracts the larger proportion of post carriages. My indifferent health alters our destination, for, dreading the heat of an Italian summer, we go hence to Switzerland instead of Nismes. Here we remain some days for letters, and to give rest to our horses, though they appear to require none. Our most intimate acquaintance is a fat gentleman, who is anxious we should take a furnished château in these environs, which has its own private theatre, (he has discovered D——’s taste already,) and, with grounds and large vineyard, is to be let for thirty pounds a year; and an old soldier of the empire, one of the few returned from Moscow, who holds young France in great contempt, and showed us the scar of a lance thrust in his throat; and a sabre cut which crippled his hand: two of the six wounds for which a grateful country bestows on him a pension of eight sous a day. Do not suppose him a beggar, or one to whom you could presume to offer money. Before he was drawn for the conscription he was a carpenter. After his military life, unable to return to his first trade, he took up another, and is now a carrier, and transports goods in his cariole from Tournus to the villages surrounding it. We made acquaintance in the stable, where I had gone to see Fanny luxuriously rolling on her clean straw; and he particularly prides himself on being divested of all prejudices belonging to the untravelled. Greuze, the painter of the sweet family-pieces we have so often admired in the Louvre, was born at Tournus; in the church is a monument erected in his honour.
27th April, Mâcon.
We loitered away the fine weather at Tournus, and took to-day the melancholy road hither, with a north-east wind which whirled its dust in our faces, and made us shiver, as we rode up and down long hills, which succeed each other without view or interest. We met a wedding trudging along a little path which wound through the clods of a ploughed field, and crossing the high road and ourselves in the direction of a village. Three fiddles preceded bride and bridegroom, who walked arm in arm, and half a dozen couples of friends and relatives followed; we made a bow to the bride, who was very plain and looked very proud. The fiddlers were conscientiously playing with all their might, and we heard the sharp, squeaking notes, “like the cracked treble of an old man’s voice,” long after we lost sight of them. The female peasantry hereabouts wear a strange kind of tiny hat tied on the top of the head, and the white cap: it is about large enough to fit that of a doll, and above a fair face might be picturesque, but worn over weather-beaten features, which the “foreign aid of ornament cannot serve,” adds to their natural ugliness; and being so small as barely to shade one eye, affords no protection against the burning summer. The Hôtel de l’Europe where we are lodged is a good inn situated on the quay: the view is pretty across the broad river, and to the plains beyond, and bounded by the Alps. The inn has good beds and civil masters, but a bad cook. We dined to-day at the table d’hôte, which consisted of only two besides ourselves, young men of no very brilliant intellect, for one asked the waiter whether the radishes served at table were of this or last year’s growth; and nothing could persuade the other that the insurrection of the Lyons workmen was not suscitated by the English, with a view to destroy the silk-trade. There is an old horse in these stables thirty-two years of age, they tell me once a favourite charger of Napoleon.
Mâcon is a very ancient town, and was of importance even in Cæsar’s time. Under the first race of French kings it formed part of the kingdom of Burgundy; under the second race the Counts of Mâcon had insensibly become hereditary, and after the reign of Hugues Capet, one of these, yielding to the devotional feelings which took sudden and absorbing possession of his mind, retired with his sons and thirty knights to the monastery of Cluny, where they assumed the cowl, while at the same time their wives became nuns in the abbey of Marcigny. The county of Mâcon then again formed part of Burgundy, and in 1245 it was sold to St. Louis, King of France, by Alice, who had inherited it from her father and brother.
The parent of the Countess Alice had, it was said, dark dealings with bad spirits; and choosing to place no bridle on his love of enjoyment, laid violent hands on property belonging to the two chapters of Mâcon, and to the abbey of Cluny. The hour of reckoning came, and a black man of fearful exterior appeared one day, and summoned the count at the foot of his palace stair. Forced to obey, he mounted, at his silent companion’s sign, a kind of car, and thereupon miraculously disappeared from his wondering subjects. His cries of despair were heard and lost in the distance. “Had he sunk into earth, or melted in air,” they knew not; but his son, witness of this event, became a monk, and ceded the county to his sister Alice, who had espoused a prince of the blood of France, and her wishes according with her husband’s, sold to Louis the holy king, a domain whose unholy lords ended so fatally. The palace was allowed to go to decay, and in the sixteenth century its ruined walls were still visible within the citadel which was in the centre of the town. The Countess Alice retired to the Abbaye des Lis near Melun, and died its abbess. Long after, in the year 1562, the Huguenots had obtained possession of Mâcon with little violence, and no shedding of blood. The Marshal of Tavannes several times, and each unsuccessfully, attempted to retake the town, until at last he entered it by the means of traitors bought over. Notwithstanding, in each street a combat awaited him, but the Huguenot party, weaker than his own, and unprepared, wasted its bravery. With the victorious troops there re-entered the town a number of women, who, on account of their shameful lives, had been expelled thence, as well as the priests, in whose habitations many of them had been found: they served to point out the houses belonging to men of the Huguenot creed, particularly of those who had been active in driving them forth.
The butchery which took place would be too horrid for minute detail; and by means of merciless pillage, Tavannes and other leaders made or augmented their fortunes. Madame de Tavannes was noted for being particularly clever in discovering in houses, which already seemed sacked, the hiding-places of plate, jewels and linen, with all which Mâcon at this time was better supplied than any town in France. The mournfully famous Sauteries de Mâcon took place when Tavannes, having departed, left in his place as governor, a certain St. Poinct, son of a woman who asserted that a priest was his father. This man was in the habit of terminating pastimes and festivals, to which he had invited all the Catholic ladies of the town, by inquiring if the farce were ready to be acted (it has since been called the farce of St. Poinct); and on receiving a reply in the affirmative, he led the way to the bridge—I believe the very same which still crosses from Mâcon to Bresse, built of stone, with thirteen arches. Hither by his command, one or two, sometimes more, of the Huguenot prisoners had already been summoned; and when St. Poinct arrived, surrounded by ladies richly attired, he would enter into gay conversation, joke with them, and give them hope of pardon, till at his well-known signal they were seized and cast from the bridge into the river. It does no honour to the Catholic dames and damsels of the day, that D’Aubigné wrote that “this man could instil into the minds of females, even maids and children, with the fruits and wines of his desserts, such feelings as taught them to look on without pity at the execution of a Huguenot.” Last night there arrived a Russian noble, with his train of serfs. The north-east wind blew bitterly, yet by the master’s order the groom, who had in some wise offended, passed the hours till morning, shivering on the box of the travelling-carriage. One of the hôtel waiters in pity carried him a bottle of wine, but as he passed
“Betwixt the wind and his nobility,”
the Russian interfered, the servant received a reprimand, and the serf no wine.
28th April.
From Mâcon to Villefranche the country improving; the low hills on the right relieve the eye, barren as they are. At St. George de Rognain’s, through which we passed, it was fair-day, and the streets so crowded, that we were forced to proceed at a slow walk,—stared, laughed, and hooted at, with what patience we might. At Villefranche it was market-day, and our progress was impeded by droves of horned cattle along the road: found, when we arrived, all the good rooms occupied at the post-house, therefore pay high prices for bad accommodation. We dined at the same table with a gentleman who has travelled on horseback from Dijon hither, and complains of the fatigue piteously! Humbert the Fourth, sire de Beaujeu, who died in 1202, singularly privileged the husbands of Villefranche, allowing them to beat their wives till the blood flowed, provided they did not die!!