The escutcheon of the Foulcres is a shield divided in the midst; on the left a fleur de lys of azure on a golden ground; on the right a fleur de lys of gold on an azure ground. These arms the Emperor Charles V. granted when he ennobled them. We went to see certain men who were conveying from Venice two ostriches to the Duke of Saxony. The male was the blacker of the two, and had a red neck; the female was of a grey colour and laid a great number of eggs. The men said that these beasts felt less fatigue than they themselves, and constantly contrived to escape, but they kept them in hand by means of a band which girt them round the back above the thighs, and another one above the shoulders. These bands held them in all round, and the guards had caused to be fastened thereto long reins, by means of which they could stop them, and make them turn as they desired. On the Tuesday the chief men of the city showed us with great courtesy a postern gate, through which all who wish may enter the city at any hour of the night, whether on horse or on foot, by simply giving his name, and the name of the citizen to whom he is going, or the name of the hostelry he purposes to visit. Two trusty men, paid by the city, keep guard, and horsemen on entering pay two batzen, and footmen one. The gate opposite to this one in the outer wall is covered with iron, and beside it, attached to a chain, is a handle, also of iron, which, being pulled, moves the chain and strikes a bell in the bedchamber of one of the porters in a high tower. The porter, though undressed and in bed, by means of machinery which he moves backwards and forwards can open the door aforesaid, albeit it is a hundred paces distant from his chamber. The incomer will find himself on a bridge, some forty paces long, covered throughout, which stretches over the city ditch. Along this bridge is a wooden casing, within which works the machinery devised to open the outside door, which is quickly closed behind the incomer. The bridge being passed, the next place is a small enclosure; and here a stranger will have to speak to the porter aforesaid and give his name and address. Then the porter with a bell gives notice to his mate, who is lodged on a lower floor of the gate tower, which contains many apartments; and this porter, by working a spring in a gallery adjacent to his chamber, opens, in the first instance, a little iron gate; and next, by means of a great wheel, raises the drawbridge in such quiet fashion that no one can detect any movement (for everything works by means of weights on the walls and on the doors), and straightway everything closes again with a great clatter. Beyond the bridge a great door, very thick, opens by itself: this is of wood and strengthened by large sheets of iron. The stranger now finds himself in a hall, and in all his passage he meets no one with whom he may speak. When he is shut up in this apartment another door, similar to the aforesaid, is opened for him, and he can enter a second hall, lighted, where he will find a brazen vessel, suspended by a chain, into which he casts the coin due for his entry, and this the porter hoists up to his chamber. If he is not content therewith he lets the stranger bide below till morning; but, if he be satisfied, he opens by similar means another great door, which closes immediately it has been passed by the stranger, who then finds himself in the town.[75] This is one of the most carefully wrought devices to be found anywhere, and the Queen of England sent thither a special ambassador to inquire of the city authority how it was worked, but the explanation of the secret was refused to her. Underneath this gateway there is a vast vault, in which can be stabled under cover five hundred horses, to be maintained and to be used in war without the knowledge or consent of the town council.
After our visit to this place we went to see the church of Sainte Croix, which is very beautiful. There at certain seasons they have a great ceremony on account of a miracle which came to pass some hundred years ago. It chanced that a woman instead of swallowing the body of our Lord, took the same from her mouth and put it, wrapped in wax, into a box. She confessed what she had done, and afterwards found what she had placed in the box had changed into real flesh. They bring forward divers testimonies to confirm the above statement, written both in Latin and German, in divers parts of the church. They exhibit this bit of wax enclosed in a crystal case and a little scrap of something red like flesh. This church, like the house of the Foulcres, is covered with copper, a thing not uncommon in these parts. The Lutheran church is built adjoining thereto, this religion being housed and established here, as in certain other places, almost in the cloisters of the Catholic churches. In the churchyard of this church they have set up the image of our Lady holding Christ in her arms, together with images of saints and infants, and this inscription: Sinite parvulos venire ad me, &c. In our lodging there was a machine made of iron fixed so as to reach down to the bottom of a very deep well. Then up above a servant, by working a handle which moves the machinery up and down within a space of three or four feet, produces a pressure on the water at the bottom of the well, and propels it by the pistons of the machine aforesaid, so that it is forced to ascend by a leaden pipe, which takes it to the kitchens and whithersoever else it may be needed. They have a paid cleaner who puts in order immediately any befoulment of the walls.
At table we were offered pasties, large and small, made in earthen dishes, of form and colour exactly resembling that of a pasty crust; and it is very rare to sit down to a meal without sweetmeats or boxes of confectionery. The bread is the best to be had anywhere, and the wines good. In this country the wine is, for the most part, white, and what we drank was not grown near Augsburg, but five or six days’ journey distant. For every hundred florins which an innkeeper lays out in wine, the city government takes sixty as a tax, and half this amount is demanded of a private person who only buys for his own consumption. In many places they still retain the custom of putting perfumes in the bed-chambers and in the stoves.
Some time ago the town was entirely Zwinglian. But since the Catholics have been recalled,[76] those of the reformed faith take the second place, and at this time, though they are greatly superior in number to the Catholics, they are ousted from all authority. M. de Montaigne also paid a visit to the Jesuits, whom he found to be men of much learning. On the morning of Wednesday, October 19, we took our breakfast, and M. de Montaigne was much grieved to depart and leave unvisited the Danube and the town of Ulm which it passes, seeing that he was only one day’s journey distant. He also desired to go to a bath some half-day’s journey farther on called Sourbronne,[77] which is in a level country, and has a spring of cold water, good both for drinking and for the bath when duly warmed. It has, moreover, a pleasant relish on the palate which makes it agreeable to drink, and it is excellent for distempers of the head and stomach. The bath is in great repute, and visitors can be most sumptuously housed there in fine apartments, the same as at Baden, according to what we were told thereanent; but the season of winter was now approaching, and this place lay in a direction opposite to that in which we were bound, wherefore it would have been necessary for us to retrace our steps to Augsburg, and M. de Montaigne was greatly averse from traversing the same road twice. I left a shield with the arms of M. de Montaigne in front of the door of the room he had occupied, marvellously well painted, at a cost of two crowns to the painter and twenty sous to the joiner. The town is on the banks of the river Lech, Lycus. We traversed a very fine country, fertile with cornfields, and after travelling five leagues, we arrived at Broug[78] in time for bed.
This is a large Catholic village, finely situated, and belonging to the duchy of Bavaria. We started on the morrow, Thursday, October 20, and after having traversed a vast plain of corn-land (for in this country no vines are planted), and then one of pasturage stretching as far as the eye could see, we arrived, after four leagues’ journey, in time for dinner at Munich, a large city about the size of Bourdeaux, the capital of the duchy of Bavaria, and the principal residence of the dukes, situated on the river Yser, Ister.
MUNICH
From Civitates Orbis Terrarum
To face p. 150, vol. i.
The castle is fine, and its stables are the best I have ever seen either in France or Italy, vaulted, and big enough to contain two hundred horses. The city is strongly Catholic, and it is populous, finely built, and busy. Since the day after we quitted Augsburg we could reckon the cost of man and horse to be four livres a day, and forty sous for a footman at the lowest. Here we found curtains in the chambers, and though there were no testers to the beds, everything belonging thereto was exceedingly well found. They clean the floors with sawdust boiled. Everywhere in these parts they slice the radishes and turnips with as great care and attention as if they were threshing corn. Seven or eight men, each one with a big knife in his hand, will set to work on the same with regular stroke, as they work in our wine-presses. These vegetables, like their great-headed cabbages, are salted for winter use, and they plant them in their fields in the country, rather than their gardens, and harvest them. The duke, who was at this time in the city, has to wife the sister of M. de Lorene,[79] and has by her two sons, big boys, and a daughter. The two brothers live also in the city, but they, together with the ladies and all the rest, were gone hunting the day we were there. On the Friday morning we went our way, and, as we passed through the duke’s forests, we saw countless red deer in flocks like sheep. We went in one stretch to Kinief, an insignificant village, about six leagues distant.
The Jesuits, who sway the government mightily in this country, have made a movement which has roused against them the hatred of the people;[80] to wit, that they have put constraint on the priests to make them send away their concubines under severe penalties. To judge from the complaints made thereanent, it appears that this licence was formerly granted to them so freely that they treated it as a legitimate thing; moreover, they are now about to address a remonstrance to the duke. It was here for the first time in Germany that they served us eggs on a fast-day in any other way than quartered in a salad. At table we had, amongst the silver, some wooden goblets made of pipe staff and hooped. A young lady, the daughter of a gentleman of this village, sent some wine to M. de Montaigne. Early on the Saturday we set out and, after seeing on our right hand the river Yser and a great lake[81] lying at the foot of the Bavarian mountains, and ascending by road for an hour, we came to the summit of the pass, where we found an inscription, recording how some hundred years ago a duke of Bavaria had cleft this way through the rocks. Then we plunged straight into the bowels of the Alps by an easy, convenient, and charmingly made road, the fine calm weather being greatly in our favour. As we descended from the summit aforesaid, we passed a very lovely lake[82] about a Gascon league in length and the same in width, surrounded by high and inaccessible mountains; and, keeping always the same road at the base of the mountains, we came now and again upon small pleasant level meadows with dwellings thereon, and arrived without halting at Mittevol,[83] a little Bavarian village, pleasantly placed on the bank of the Yser. Here we ate the first chestnuts we had seen in Germany, served raw. In the hostelry there is a hot room, in which travellers go to get sweated for a charge of a batz and a half. I myself went to see it, while Messieurs were at supper, and found there several Germans, who were being cupped and bled. On the morrow, Sunday, October 23rd, we set forth on the same path amongst the mountains, and soon came to a house and a gate which barred the passage. This was the entrance to the country of Tirol, belonging to the Archduke of Austria, and after travelling three leagues we arrived in time for dinner at Seefelden,[84] a small village with an abbey standing in a very pleasant site.