The Seine at this point is nothing very majestic. It is simply a “humble filet que le nain vert, Oberon, franchirait d’un bond sans mouiller ses grelots.” All Frenchmen, and Parisians in particular, have a reverence for every kilometre of the swift-flowing waters of the Seine. This is perhaps difficult for the stranger, who may be familiar with greater if less historic streams at home, to appreciate until he has actually discussed the thing with some Frenchman. Then he learns that it is the Frenchman’s Niagara, Mississippi and Yosemite and Pike’s Peak all rolled into one so far as his worship goes.
Midway between Châtillon and the source is Duesme, a smug, unheard of little hamlet, the successor of a feudal bourg of great renown in its day. The sparse ruined walls still suggest the pride of place which it once held when capital of the powerful Burgundian Countship of Duesme. Its walls are still something more than mere outlines, but the manorial residence has become one of those “walled farms,” so called, so frequently seen, and so unexpectedly, in the countryside of France. Here and there a gate-post, a wall or a gable, is as of old, and two great ornamental vases support the entrance to the alleyed row of trees which leads from the highroad to the dwelling, suggesting, if in a vague way, the old adage, “Other days, other ways.”
The fall of this fine old feudal residence has been great, but the present occupant—if he has a thought or care for such things—must be content indeed with such a princely farm-house. It must be a fine thing to raise chickens and other barn-yard livestock amid such surroundings!
CHAPTER VII
TONNERRE, TANLAY AND ANCY-LE-FRANC
THE origin of Tonnerre was due to a chateau-fort built here on the right bank of the Armançon, surrounded by a groupment of huddling dwellings which, in turn, were enclosed by a corselet wall of ramparts.
Tonnerre grew to its majority through the ambitions of a powerful line of counts who made the original fortress which they constructed the centre of a tiny capital of a feudal kingdom in miniature. From the suzerainty of the Sennonais, of which it was a county, Tonnerre came to bear the same title under control of the Burgundians, in whose hands it remained until it passed to the house of Luvois.
Only skimpy odds and ends remain of Tonnerre’s one-time flanking gates, walls and towers. Its old chateau—which the counts invariably referred to, and with reason doubtless, as a palace—has been rebuilt and incorporated into the structure of the present hospital, itself a foundation by Marguerite de Bourgogne and dating back to 1293. No doubt many of the wards which to-day shelter the ill and crippled were once the scene of princely revels.
In the nineteenth century the structure was further remodelled and put in order, but it remains still, from an architectural point of view at least, an admirable example of Renaissance building, though none of its attributes to be seen at a first glance are such as are usually associated with a great chateau of the noblesse of other days. At all events its functions of to-day are worthy, and it is far better to admire a mediæval chateau which has become a hospital than one which has been transformed into a military barracks or a prison for thieves and cutthroats, an indignity which has been thrust on many a grand old edifice in France deserving of a better fate. To-day such a hard sentence is seldom passed. The “Commission des Monuments Historiques” sees to it that no such desecrations are further committed.
Within the hospice is the remarkably sculptured tomb of Marguerite de Bourgogne; as remarkably done in fact as the better known ducal tombs at Dijon, and those of the Église de Brou at Bourg-en-Bresse. The workmanship of these elaborate sculptures is typical of that known as the École de Dijon.
Tonnerre’s most remarkable sight is neither its chateau, nor its hospice, at least not according to the inhabitant. There is nothing to the native more curious or interesting to see than the celebrated Fosse Dionne (the Fons Dionysius of the ancients), a fountain which supplies the city with an abundance of fresh water coming from no one knows where, but spouting from the earth like a geyser, and with a sufficient force to turn a couple of water-mills. An ordinary enough bubbling spring is interesting to most of us, so that one enjoying an ancient and mysterious reputation is put down as a local curiosity well worth coming miles to see.