Béarn and the Pyrenees

by Louisa Stuart Costello

Garlands of luxuriant vines, with white and black grapes in clusters, now adorn the ruined walls; and fruit-trees and flowering shrubs grow on the terraces. It requires some attention to trace the form of the amphitheatre; as so many houses and walls are built in, and round about its site.

The foundation is attributed to the Emperor Gallienus, and occurred probably in the third century. Medals of many kinds of metal have been frequently found in excavating, which prove the period; but the learned have not been silent on so tempting a theme, and the history of the Arènes de Poitiers has occupied the attention of all the antiquaries of France. It appears that the size was greater than that of Nismes.

It is strange that so much of the ruins should still remain of the amphitheatre in spite of so many centuries of destruction acting upon it, and, notwithstanding its having been constantly resorted to as a quarry, whenever materials were required for construction. In one of the quarters of the town, the Rue des Arènes and the Bourg Cani, where the poorest people live, almost all the houses are formed of the chambers belonging to a Roman establishment. The roofs of almost all are Roman: the cellars, the stables, and the granaries. No doubt Poitiers was a place of the greatest importance under their sway, as these extensive ruins indicate.

The park of Blossac is the most attractive promenade of Poitiers: it is beautifully laid out, and well kept. An intendant of Poitou, M. de la Bourdonnaye-Blossac, established it in 1752, with the benevolent intent of giving employment, in a hard winter, to the poor. In constructing it, a great many sepulchres of the Gauls, and funereal vases, were discovered; some of which are preserved in the museum.

The view is charming from the terrace of Blossac above the Clain, and one is naturally led to pursue the agreeable walks which invite the steps at every turn. We found that, by following as they pointed, we should arrive at most of the places we desired to see; and, as the interior of the town has few attractions in itself, we resolved to skirt it, and continue our way along the ramparts. They extend a long way, and are extremely pleasant in their whole extent. Remnants of ancient towers and rampart walls appear here and there, the river runs clear and bright beneath, and beyond are gently undulating hills; while, occasionally, heaps of grey rocks, of peculiar forms, some looking like temples, others like towers, rise suddenly from their green base, surprising the eye.

In the direction of the most remarkable of these, may be found a pierre levée, said, by veracious chroniclers, to have been raised on the spot by the great saint of Poitiers, Sainte Radegonde, who is reported to have brought the great stone on her head, and the pillars which support it in the pockets of her muslin apron: one of these pillars fell from its frail hold to the ground, and the devil instantly caught it up and carried it away, which satisfactorily accounts for the stone being elevated only at one end. Unfortunately the same legend is so often repeated respecting different saints, and in particular respecting Saint Magdalen, who has often been known to establish herself in wild places, bringing her rugged stool with her, that it would seem some or other of these holy people plagiarised from the other.

Rabelais attributes this stone to Pantagruel, who, "seeing that the scholars of Poitiers, having a great deal of leisure, did not know how to spend their time, was moved with compassion, and, one day, took from a great rock, which was called Passe-Lourdin, an immense block, twelve toises square, and fourteen pans thick, and placed it upon four pillars in the midst of a field, quite at its ease, in order that the said scholars, when they could think of nothing else to do, might pass their time in mounting on the said stone, and there banqueting with quantities of flagons, hams, and pasties; also in cutting their names on it with a knife: this stone is now called La Pierre Levée. And in memory of this, no one can be matriculated in the said University of Poitiers who has not drunk at the cabalistic fountain of Croustelles, been to Passe-Lourdin, and mounted on La Pierre Levée."

Bouchet's opinion is, that the stone was placed by Aliénor d'Aquitaine, about 1150, to be used at a fair which was held in the field where it stands.

It is, no doubt, one of the Dolmen, whose strange and mysterious appearance may well have puzzled both the learned and unlearned in every age since they were first erected.

One of the most interesting monuments in Poitiers is the museum; for it is a Roman structure—a temple or a tomb—almost entire, and less injured than might have been expected, serving as a receptacle for all the antiquities which have been collected together at different periods, in order to form a musée. They are appropriately placed in this building, and are seen with much more effect in its singular walls than if looked at on the comfortable shelves of a boarded and white-washed chamber.