[141] The spot was called originally Tres Valles—The Three Valleys.
[142] He did not use the word abeille, but the prettier mediæval form, avette, from the Latin apicula little bee. "Labussière et Citeaux," p. 233 of Tebsima, by l'Abbé B——.
[CHAPTER XIII]
Of the thousand who pass through the town annually, on their way to Switzerland or the Riviera, only a small percentage, probably, know Dijon as the ancient capital of the Duchy of Burgundy; fewer still have any conception of the vanished glories it stands for; or could name the three commodities—if I may so describe them—and the principal industry upon which the prosperity of the modern city is based.
From the early middle ages to the closing years of the Capetian Dukes, from 1032 to 1364, the essential history of Burgundy is centred rather round the religious communities of Cluny and Citeaux, than in the ducal courts of Auxerre or of Dijon. But upon the advent in that year, of the royal house of Valois, with Philippe le Hardi, the full light of the most glorious, and by far the most highly coloured, period of Burgundian history is turned upon the capital of the Duchy.
Yet the "bonne ville de Dijon," through which Duke Philip rode on November 26th, 1364, on his way to the solemn function in the cathedral of St. Bénigne, was no more than a second-rate city. Not only did it lack the glories of the Ducal Palace and the Chartreuse de Champmol that he himself was soon to found, but one would have missed the church of St. Michel, the Palais de Justice, and many other hotels, palaces, and churches, that, still standing, make the modern city one of the most interesting in France. The Dijon of that day was a straggling town of narrow, filthy, unpaved streets over whose projecting gables rose the towers and spires of St. Bénigne, St. Philibert, Notre Dame, and many another Church. In wet weather, the mud spurted from under horses' hoofs upon the grimy walls of the houses on either side of the street, and it is more than probable that the gorgeously attired courtiers of Philip's procession arrived, splashed up to the knees, at the abbey.
Twenty years later, even, in 1388, the Duke was annoyed by the dirty condition of the town, which was such that, in the rains of winter, neither man nor horse could make progress without great difficulty. Each inhabitant was consequently compelled to clean and level, at his own cost, the portion of street on which his house fronted; and a new pavement was then laid down, at an expense to the Duchy of two thousand golden francs.[147]