Chateau de Voltaire, Ferney
furniture and portraits of the time of the satirist. At the entrance to the chateau is a tiny chapel, built also by Voltaire when he was in that particular mood. Over its portal it bears the following words, “Deo Erexit Voltaire MDCCLXI.” Arsène Houssaye called the words an impertinence, and, admitting Voltaire’s genius, one is inclined to assent to the dictum. “My church,” said Voltaire, “is erected to God, the only one throughout Christendom; there are thousands to Saint Jean, to Saint Paul and to all the rest of the calendar, but not another in all the world to God.”
Such a romantically storied region as this might naturally be expected to abound in historic souvenirs and monuments almost without end. To an extent this is true, but such souvenirs and recollections of the past more frequently present themselves than do actual castle walls, be they ruined or well-preserved.
The antique lore of ancient Bresse goes back to Druidical days. Stone axes, Celtic tombs and medals, skeletons wearing bracelets and anklets of iron and copper have been found in great numbers, and from these have been built up a vague history of the earliest times.
Of Roman remains there are still evident many outlines of the camps of the legionaries, innumerable evidences and tracings of old Roman highroads, with here and there fragments of aqueducts, baths and temples. Near Bourg have been discovered various medals of the ancient colony of Massilia, on the shores of the Mediterranean, and one wonders what were the relations of the Ostragoth peoples of Bresse with the Phoceans of Marseilles. History is non-committal.
There are no magnificent monumental remains of Roman times left in these parts save occasional fragments and towers which presumably served for signalling purposes as a part of the fortifications of the Saracens. For any architectural monuments of note one can not with certainty go back to a period earlier than that in which the Burgundian power was at its height, or to the time of Charles-le-Chauve in the ninth century.
The feudal memories of Bresse are chiefly the ruins of the seigneurial chateau at Chateauneuf, the chief-town of the Val-Romey. Built high on the summit of a peak of rock and surrounded by deep-cut fosses, and walls which drop down sheer like the sides of a precipice, this chief feudal residence of the Val-Romey was more a fortress than a delectable domestic establishment, though it served the functions of both, as was frequently the case with the feudal edifice of its class. What it lacked in actual luxury or comfort it made up for in the added protection offered by its sturdy walls. This was notably true of all seigneurial residences which occupied isolated positions in the feudal epoch. Its walls to-day, shorn of any æsthetic beauty which they may once have possessed, and crumbling and moss-grown on every side, still rise a hundred or more feet in air above their rocky foundations, and in many places have a thickness of a dozen or fifteen feet. They built well in those old days, before the era of armoured cement covered with stucco. Modern builders make great claims for their product, but will it last? No man knows, and, from the fact that masonry cannot be built even to-day so as to stand up against shot and shell, one doubts if modern work is really as durable as that of a thousand years ago. The military architecture of feudal France, so often closely allied with that of the civic and domestic varieties, was preëminent in its time.
The religious architecture, the monasteries and churches, of these parts have certainly more ornate reminders of the undeniable opulence of the region than the secular examples still existing.
Connecting Bresse and the Franche Comté is a curious little battery of townlets that have never been mentioned in the guide-books, nor ever will be. A motor flight from Bourg-en-Bresse to Besançon evolved the following: First came a smug little town named briefly Pierre. It possesses a chateau, too, reckoned as one of the really remarkable examples of the style of Burgundian building. It certainly looks all that is claimed for it, though we saw it only in the dim twilight of a May evening. The impression was all-satisfying, and, that being what one really travels for, one should be content.
For a neighbour there was Champdivers, which recalled a memory of Odette de Champdivers, the one time companion of the poor Charles VI. during his latter unhappy days. Truly this was proving for us a most romantic region, a region utterly neglected by the great world of tourists who pick out the big-type names on the map and make up their itineraries accordingly.