There stood upon a column another woman of singular beauty, apparently in the period of brilliant youth, whose hair descended in tresses on each side of her face, and was fastened behind; she occupied a situation but slightly elevated, so that she could be touched by the hand. In the right hand, although the arm had no support, this statue bore a horseman, whose horse she held by one foot, and that apparently as easily as a cup of wine is carried. This horseman, of a manly, noble bearing, clothed in his cuirass, and with booted legs, seemed actually to breathe war. The horse’s ears were raised as if he heard the sound of the trumpet, his head elevated, his look fiery, and the ardour painted in his eyes denoted his impatience for the course; his feet, prancing in the air, seemed springing forward with a warlike bound.
After this statue, next to the eastern boundary of the Quadriges, called of the yellow faction, were placed statues of charioteers, examples and models of the art of skilfully driving a chariot. They appeared almost, by the disposition of their hands, to warn charioteers, not to loosen the reins on approaching the boundary; but to hold the horses with a tight hand whilst turning, and to make a sharp and continual use of the whip, so as to keep as close to the boundary as possible, and leave the unskilful rival charioteer, to make too wide a sweep, and lose the advantage, even with the best horses.
I will only add one particularity, for I have not undertaken to describe everything. That which excited remarkable pleasure and admiration, was a stone basis, upon which was placed an animal in bronze, which might have been taken for an ox, but that its tail was too small; like the oxen of Egypt, it had not long dewlaps, and its hoofs were not cloven. It crushed within its jaws, almost to the point of stifling it, another animal, whose body was bristling with scales, so pointed, that although of bronze, they would wound those who ventured to touch them: this animal was supposed to be a basilisk, and the creature it had seized, an aspick; but by others one was said to be an ox from the banks of the Nile, and the other a crocodile. For my part, I will not undertake to reconcile these opinions; I will content myself with saying that they were engaged in a most astonishing contest, and inflicted serious wounds upon each other; for sometimes the more strong, sometimes the mere weak, they were at the same time conquerors and conquered. The animal, which many supposed to be a basilisk, was all swollen from head to feet, and the poison circulating throughout its body, and flowing through all its members, gave it a colour greener than that of frogs,—a colour of death. It was upon its knees, with languishing eyes, and appeared to have lost all strength and vigour. It might have been believed even, that it had long been dead, had not its hind legs, at least, still stood firmly under it. The other animal which it held in its jaws, still waved its tail a little, and opened its long mouth under the pressure of the teeth which held and stifled it. It appeared to use its utmost efforts to escape from the teeth and jaws which held it so tenaciously, but could not succeed; for its body was fast between the jaws, and transpierced by the teeth of its enemy from the shoulders and the fore-feet to the part next to the tail. It was thus they died, the one by the other; the combat was mutual, the vengeance reciprocal, the victory equal, and the death common.[149] For my part, I believe I may remark on this subject, that it is not only in effigy, or among fierce and strong animals, that beings wicked and fatal to man thus inflict a mutual death upon each other; but that we often see nations, which bring war to the Romans, destroy each other; which is an effect of the power of Christ, who disperses nations that are friends to war, who holds blood in horror, and shows the just marching against the aspick and the basilisk, and trampling under foot the lion and the dragon.
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No. 28.
Letter to M. Michaud upon the Crusade of Children of 1212, by M. Am. Jourdain.
The expedition beyond the seas, undertaken about 1212, and composed entirely of children, if not one of the most striking events of the crusades, certainly appears to me to be not one of the least extraordinary. That institutions dictated by the spirit of religion, and destined either to propagate our religion, or to elevate its splendour, have not always found in their object a preservative against the corruption attached to human beings, is a truth established by numberless examples; but that fanaticism or the genius of evil, should be sufficiently powerful to extinguish in childhood the natural sentiment of its weakness, and draw it away from its natural supports, to inspire it with this train of ideas, this perseverance in resolutions, this accordance required by every enterprise formed by a numerous concourse of individuals, is what we can scarcely believe, although the memory of the fact is preserved by several historians. Whoever is acquainted with the taste of the middle ages for the marvellous, and has only read the incomplete account of the modern historians of the crusades, is at first tempted to range this expedition among fabulous adventures; and to procure it any credit, it is necessary to produce evidences worthy of our confidence.
In my first incredulity, I employed myself in collecting these evidences; I offer them to you in this letter, monsieur, in order to furnish, if possible, one trait more for the varied picture of the errors of the human mind.
We must distinguish various circumstances in this strange event; its date, the means which prepared it, the places that witnessed it, and its issue. Although criticism has not sufficient data to determine each of these points with precision, nevertheless the chronicles of the middle ages furnish us with documents sufficiently extensive to satisfy a prudent curiosity.