A stout piece of wood-work is fixed horizontally along the face of the weir, and has the effect of throwing the downward water out of its natural direction, and causing it to describe an arch, so that it descends with much force on to the weir at a point below the wood-work. Here two planks are placed, forming a seat and a support for the back, and a little lower still another plank for the feet to rest upon, without which the bather would have a good chance of being washed away. The water boils noisily and violently on all sides and in all directions, coming down upon the subject's shoulders with a heavy thud, which calls to mind the tender years when something softer than a cane was used, and sends him forth like a fresh-boiled lobster. All this, with towels, is not dear at fourpence.
The citadel is the great sight of Besançon, and the polite Colonel-commandant attends at his office at convenient hours to give passes. What it might be to storm the position under the excitement of the sport of war, I cannot say; but certainly it is a most trying affair on a hot Sunday's afternoon, even when all is made smooth, and the gates are opened, by a comprehensive pass. The wall mentioned by Cæsar as a great feature of the place cut the site of the citadel off from the town, and many signs of it were found when the cathedral of S. Stephen was built, the unfortunate church which went down before the exigencies of a siege under Louis XIV. The barrack-master proved to be a most interesting man, knowing many details of Cæsar's life and campaigns which I suspect were not known to that captain himself. He had served in Algeria, and assented to the proposition that more soldiers died there of absinthe than of Arabs, stating his conviction that three-fourths of the whole deaths are caused by that pernicious extract of wormwood, and that he ought himself to have died of it long ago. He pointed out the difference between the massive masonry of the period of the Spanish occupation and the less impressive work of more recent times, and showed the dungeon from which Marshal Bourmont bought his escape, in the time of the first Napoleon.
The floor of one of the little look-out towers is composed of a tombstone, representing a priest in full ecclesiastical dress, and my question as to how it came there elicited the following story:--When Louis XIV. was besieging the citadel, he placed his head-quarters, and a strong battery, on the summit of the Mont Chaudane,[[42]] which commands the citadel on one side as the Brégille does on the other. Among the besieged was a monk named Schmidt, probably one of the Low-country men to whom the Franche Comté was then a sort of home, as forming part of the dominions of Spain; and this monk was the most active supporter of the defence, against the large party within the walls which was anxious to render the town. He was also an admirable shot; and on one of the last days of the siege, as he stood in the little tower where the tombstone now lies, the King and his staff rode to the front of the plateau on the Mont Chaudane to survey the citadel; whereupon some one pointed out to Schmidt that now he had a fair chance of putting an end at once to the siege and the invasion. Accordingly, he took a musket from a soldier and aimed at the King; but before firing he changed his aim, remarking, that he, a priest, ought not to destroy the life of a man, and so he only killed the horse, giving the Majesty of France a roll in the mud. When the town was taken, the King enquired for the man who killed his horse, and asked the priest whether he could have killed the rider instead, had he wished to do so. 'Certainly,' Schmidt replied, and related the facts of the case. Louis informed him, that had he been a soldier, he should have been decorated for his skill and his impulse of mercy; but, being a priest, he should be hung. The sentence was carried out, and the priest's body was buried in the floor of the tower from which he had spared the King's life. If this be true, it was one of the most unkingly deeds ever done.[[43]]
This siege took place in the second invasion or conquest of the Franche Comté by Louis XIV., when Besançon held out for nine days against Vauban and the King: on the first occasion it had surrendered to Condé after one day's siege, making the single stipulation that the Holy Shroud should not be removed from the town.[[44]] The Saincte Suaire was the richest ecclesiastical treasure of the Bisuntians, being one of the two most genuine of the many Suaires, the other being that of Turin, which was supported by Papal Infallibility. Both were brought from the Crusades; and the one was presented to Besançon in 1206, the other to Turin in 1353. Bede tells a story of the proving of a Shroud by fire in the eighth century, by one of the caliphs; and as its dimensions were 8 feet by 4, like that of Besançon, while the Shroud of Turin measured 12 feet by 3, the people of Besançon claimed that theirs was the one spoken of by Bede.
The Cathedral of Besançon is no longer S. Stephen, since the destruction of that church by Louis XIV. The small Church of the Citadel is now dedicated to that saint, an inscription on the wall stating that it takes the place of the larger church, ex urbis obsidio anno 1674 lapsae, and offering an indulgence of 100 days for every visit paid to it, with the sensible proviso una duntaxat vice per diem. Soldiers not being generally made of the confessing sex, or of confessing material, there is only one confessional provided for the 6,000 souls which the citadel can accommodate.
The Cavalry Barracks are in the lower part of the town, and near them is a large building with evident traces of ecclesiastical architecture on the outside. It is, in fact, a very fine church converted into stables, retaining its interior features in excellent preservation. Under the corn-bin lies a lady who had two husbands and fifteen children, Antigone in parentes, Porcia in conjuges, Sempronia in liberos; while a few yards further east, less agreeably placed, is an ecclesiastic of the Gorrevod family, who reckoned Prince and Bishop and Baron among his titles. The nave of this Church of S. Michael accommodates thirty horses, and the north aisle thirteen; the south is considered more select, and is boarded off for the decani, in the shape of officers' chargers. The north side of the chancel gives room for six horses, and the south side for a row of saddle-blocks. It had been an oversight on the part of the original architect of the church that no place was prepared for the daily hay; a fault which the military restorers have remedied by improvising a lady-chapel, where the hay for the day is placed in the morning. With Spelman in my mind, I asked if the stables were not unhealthy; but the soldiers said they were the healthiest in the town.[[45]]
The Glacière of Vaise had proved, as has been seen, to be a mare's-nest; and yet, after all, it produced a foal; for while I was endeavouring to overcome the evening heat of Besançon in a spécialité for ice, I found that the owner of the establishment was also the owner of the two glacières of Vaise; and in the course of the conversation which followed, he told me of the existence of a natural glacière near the village of Arc-sous-Cicon, twenty kilomètres from Pontarlier, which he had himself seen. As I had arranged to meet my sisters at Neufchâtel, in two days' time, for the purpose of visiting a glacière in the Val de Travers, this piece of information came very opportunely, and I determined to attempt both glacières with them.
Some of the trains from Besançon stop for an hour at Dôle in passing towards Switzerland by way of Pontarlier, and anyone who is interested in the Burgundian and Spanish wars of France should take this opportunity of seeing what may be seen of the town of Dôle and its massive church-tower. The sieges of Dôle made it very famous in the later middle ages, more especially the long siege under Charles d'Amboise, at the crisis of which that general recommended his soldiers to leave a few of the people for seed,[[46]] and the old sobriquet la Joyeuse was punningly changed to la Dolente. It has had other claims upon fame; for if Besançon possessed one of the two most authentic Holy Shrouds, Dôle was the resting-place of one of the undoubted miraculous Hosts, which had withstood the flames in the Abbey of Faverney. It was for the reception of this Host that the advocates of the Brotherhood of Monseigneur Saint Yves built the Sainte Chapelle at Dôle.[[47]]