There was a popular impression long current among French writers that Madame de Sévigné was born in the Chateau de Bourbilly. A line or two of that indefatigable penman, Bussy, tended to make this ready of belief when he wrote of his cousin as “Une demoiselle de Bourgogne egarée en Bretagne.” She herself claimed to have been “transplanted,” but it was a transplantation by marriage; she was most certainly not born at Bourbilly, at any rate, for history, better informed than an unconvincing scribbler, states that she was born in Paris, like Molière and Voltaire, who also have finally been claimed by the capital as her own.
At all events, at Bourbilly Madame de Sévigné was true enough on the land of the “vieux chateau de ses pères, ses belles prairies, sa petite rivière, ses magnifiques bois.” It was her property in fact, or came to be, and she might have lived there had she chosen. She would not dispose of it when importuned to do so, and replied simply, but coldly (one reads this in the “Letters”), “I will not sell the property for the reason that I wish to hand it down to my daughter.” From this one would think that she had a great affection for it, but at times it was a “vieux chateau” and at others it was a “horrible maison.” Capricious woman! The letters of Madame de Sévigné written from here were not numerous, as she only “stopped over” on her various journeyings. When one recognizes the tastes and habits of the Marquise, it is not to be wondered at that her visits to Bourbilly were neither prolonged nor multiplied.
Turning one’s itinerary south from Semur one comes shortly to Cussy-la-Colonne, where “la Colonne” is recognized by the archæologists as one of the most celebrated and most ancient monuments of Burgundy.
One learns from the inscription in Franco-Latin that the ancient monument (antiquissimum hoc monumentum) much damaged by the flapping wings of time, was rebuilt, as nearly as possible in its original form, by a prefect of the Department of the Côte d’Or (Collis Aurei Praefectus), M. Charles Arbaud, in the reign (sous l’empire) of Charles X (imperante Carolo X.... Anno Salutis MDCCCXXV.) An astonishing mélange this of the tongue of Cicero and modern administrative patois.
The Colonne de Cussy, is rather a pagan memorial of a victory of the Romans in the reign of Diocletian, or, from another surmise, a funeral monument to a Roman general dead on the eve of victory. In either case, there it stands fragmentary and wind and weather worn like the pillars of Hercules or Pompey.
One simply notes Cussy and its “colonne” en passant on the road to Saulieu and Arnay-le-Duc, where the Ducs de Bourgogne had one of their most favoured country houses, or manors.
We only stopped at Saulieu by chance anyway; we stopped for the night in fact because it was getting too late to push on farther, and we were glad indeed that we did.
Saulieu is a most ancient town and owes its name to a neighbouring wood. Here was first erected a pagan temple to the sun; fragments of it have recently been found; and here one may still see the tracings of the old Roman way crossing what was afterwards,—to the powerful colony at Autun,—the Duchy of Burgundy.
As a fortified place Saulieu was most potent, but in 1519 a pest destroyed almost its total population. Disaster after disaster fell upon it and the place never again achieved the prominence of its neighbouring contemporaries.
It was here at Saulieu in Revolutionary times that the good people, as if in remembrance of the disasters which had befallen them under monarchial days, hailed with joy the arrival of the men of the Marseilles Battalion as they were marching on Paris “to help capture Capet’s castle.” Before the church of Saint Saturnin the Patriots’ Club had lighted a big bonfire, and the “Men of the Midi” were received with open arms and a warm welcome.