Winged Wheels in France

by Michael Myers Shoemaker

Here we turn southward some three miles to the secluded valley where rest the town and Abbey of Fontevrault. The scene behind us is so attractive that we almost hesitate to leave it, but to all lovers of history, history in its most romantic and picturesque years, the name of Fontevrault will conjure such a series of kingly tableaux that all else will be forgotten.

Down in a valley, three miles from the Loire, the traveller comes upon the celebrated Abbey, the ancient shrine of the Plantagenets, where to-day reposes the dust of Henry II. and Richard Cœur de Lion, and while I am not tempted to do violence upon my swiftly moving machine, I certainly do enter protest against such an entrance to such a spot and command the slowest progress of which it is capable. The way should be lined with broom corn and there should be many knights and "ladyes" abroad; and towering above them all (they say he was six feet six), dressed in mail, with the sign of the Leopard on his shield—one more stately than the rest, with a lofty brow, blue eyes wide apart, reddish yellow hair and curling beard, both cut short,—Richard Cœur de Lion, Count of Anjou, King of England.

The scene was undoubtedly picturesque in his time, but it is sombre and dull to-day. The Abbey stands long, low, and gloomy in the midst of the sad little town, and where the King found a religious establishment of great importance, we find one of the largest prisons in France and must obtain a permit to visit even the church. I wait in the little place while Jean is off to the Mayor for that purpose. It is a dull, sad-looking little place, and one not often intruded upon by those who move in autos, as I discover through the attention bestowed upon my machine, though save for those imprisoned in yonder buildings, there do not seem enough people here to make a crowd. Fontevrault is as forgotten of the world as those who are sent here at the expense of the State.

PAVILION DE L'HORLOGE AT CHINON
From a photograph

It is said that King Richard came here to pray by the body of his father, King Henry, who died at Chinon, and that he was met at the head of the cathedral steps by his brother John, who succeeded him on the throne. The edifice in those days evidently stood in an open square; to-day we approach it by a covered way, through whose openings we see the prison buildings. Richard came in all humility and in deep remorse for the war he had waged upon his father, and, it is said, that when he knelt and touched the corpse it bled and shuddered. What a picture! The high altar in shadow save for its one blinking light, the many candles around the dead king on his bier, with the dark stain on his face, the living king with Count John peering in terror over his shoulder, and all the Court with the Abbess and her nuns shrinking away, while over all the great church, which even at that day (1189), had neared its century, rose dim and shadowy full of the chill taint of darkness.

Here Richard took up the Cross, and we know what followed in Palestine. To-day you must force yourself to bring to mind any of these pictures, for the church has little of romance about it. The structure is in the form of a Roman cross, with no aisles, and with short transepts having two chapels. The choir has three chapels. Where the royal dead originally slept does not appear,—certainly not in the south transept where one now finds the monuments restored after the Terrorists had done their work upon them. As for the nave, it is boarded off and divided into floors for dormitories for the prisoners. The place is more desecrated than Stirling, for that is a barrack, not a prison. The royal effigies are however of great interest, especially that of Cœur de Lion, as it is considered to be a portrait, and certainly fulfils one's idea of the appearance of that king. The traveller of to-day who does not stand long in contemplation before this figure in stone must be lacking in many ways; but the effigy of Henry II. will not hold his attention in the same degree, though he will pause a moment over that of Eleanor, queen to Henry and the mother of Richard.