A great part of the Abbey buildings still remain, restored almost beyond recognition, and transformed into a magnificent mansion, now in the occupation of a family whose name I have forgotten. To our great regret we were unable to see the house, as the gardien had vanished, taking the keys with him; so we had to content ourselves with glimpses of glorious Gothic arcades, Romanesque staircases, and a west front, apparently of the fifteenth century, with a flamboyant door. But much of the building may be entirely new, for all I know.
It was late in the afternoon that we rode into Labussière, and as we had to get on to Bligny that night, very little time was left in which to do more than explore the church, a thoroughly good sample of Cistercian severity, of the eleventh or twelfth century, with a square apse. It has some fine tombs, and Gothic monumental slabs. Dining that night in the "Cheval Blanc" at Bligny, where the host served to us, at half an hour's notice, a dinner that the Carlton could not have bettered, for hungry men, we agreed that it would not be easy to find a more charming pays than the valley of the Ouche, in which to pass a lazy fortnight, tracing out some of its hundred legends, and steeping oneself in its romantic past.
The road to Arnay-le-Duc, without being more than ordinarily interesting, gives you some fine views over the Côte d'Or. You pass through Antigny-le-Chatel, where there is a fine ruin on a hill, and below it a later ghostly castle of the 14th or 15th century, with the high-pitched roof of the period, and a round tower. At Froissy, entering an inn in search of déjeuner, we found a wedding in full swing. Through a glass panelled door we could see half a dozen perspiring couples scuffling round what would be described in England as the bar parlour. We were detected at once; hot faces were pressed against the glass, while Madame produced an armful of bread, and some cheese on a broken plate.
"Par ici, m'sieur et dame," said she; "Vous serez mieux dans la charmesse." She opened the panelled door, and, one carrying the bread, and the other the cheese on a broken plate, we walked in grand procession through the ballroom—so shaking with our inward mirth that the cheese nearly came to grief. The poor bride, however—a study in sticky purple and white, not good to look upon—did not relish the joke; she scowled upon the intruders; but madame seemed glad to have us—and ready to talk to us, as we sat in the charmesse—a little dusty, rickety arbour, through which the south wind was blowing clouds of dust.
"That castle over there. Oh! no one has lived in it these many years now, except rats. You can't tax them. You see the Government put such heavy taxes upon the castles that they just drive people away. There's not a habited château now in all Côte d'Or. And what weather! Such a wind! Nous n'avons plus de saisons en Bourgogne."
"Whose wedding is this?" said my wife, looking towards the ballroom bar-parlour.
"Oh that's my nephew; he is a vigneron, and a good lad. Is madame married, and has she children? No children! Then madame, je vous souhaite un beau fils."
As for me, I was speculating on the market price of rat-poison, of castles in the Côte d'Or, and on the squeezability of the French government in the matter of assessments.