But Notre Dame, though good, is not the best of Beaune. The church must yield to the Hôtel Dieu. History, or, at any rate, my history, does not relate how Nicholas Rolin, the Chancellor of Philippe le Bon, came to erect at a little fifth-rate town, such as is Beaune, a hospital unrivalled in all France; yet such is the fact. I do not even know why he built one at all, unless old Louis XI.'s mot be true—that he had "made enough poor to necessitate building a hospital to keep them in." But, there it is, an eighth wonder of the world; beautiful, from the crest on the gable to the knocker on the door.
This Hôtel Dieu, seen on a grey day or a blue one, is absolutely harmonious and satisfying. Whether you follow the length of soft, yellow, brown wall, the blue-grey expanse of the high-pitched roof, the delicate flêche, or the starry, gabled hood over the entrance, your eye feasts upon a poem in form and colour; you feel at once the intense delight of looking upon a work of art that could not have been better done. But you will stay longest before the porch, the most daring and most completely successful that exists.
The entrance is beneath a flattened arch, through a panelled door with a beautiful forged-iron knocker and alms-box; all protected by a glorious three-gabled hood, crocketed and pinnacled, and built into the main wall, from which it projects without visible support. The pendants have angels, bearing shields, with the arms of Nicholas Rolin and his wife. The hood is slated in grey, as is the roof, and the blue vault beneath is starred with golden stars, symbolizing the little heaven within. Upon the blue tympanum is written in gold letters, "Hostel Dieu, 1443." All these blues and golds harmonise perfectly with the great crested roof, whether in its more sombre, grey mood, or when the richer purples come leaping from it at the call of the sun, to play about the sides of the dormers, or among the shadows of the flagged pinnacles above.
The exterior remains almost unchanged from the time of Nicholas Rolin, when the poor of Beaune first gathered round the stone benches, and beneath the verandah,[180] to receive their dole of five hundred kilos of bread that are still distributed once a year to the needy of the district.
Following a white-winged sister, we passed into the courtyard, to find ourselves in a great, galleried building, of the late Flemish type, with a many-coloured linoleum roof, elaborate pinnacled gables, and, in one corner, a well in the forged ironwork which the Flamands of that time worked with unrivalled skill.
There was only one jarring note—the garish brown colour of the woodwork, laid on, the guide told me, five years ago. It is a thousand pities; for had the oak been merely oiled, or painted a dark brown, or matched with one of the tints in the roof, many visitors would be spared a shock, and I doubt not that the convalescence of certain patients would be considerably accelerated. Yet, in spite of garish paint, we can echo Viollet-le-Duc's sentiment, that it is worth while to be ill at Beaune.
This abode of peace takes you straight back to the fifteenth century, with its beauties all intact, and only its horrors mitigated. Nothing here has changed—from the costumes of the white angels who flit noiselessly through the kitchens and wards, to the tapestry covers laid upon the curtained, oak beds, with the oak chairs beside them. Even the pewter vessels are identical with those in use at the founding of the hospital.
The chapel, too, opening from one of the wards, is a good place to pray in. Through the glorious windows—copies of the original, resplendent with figures and devices—the warm colour streams down upon the altar, where of old was set up Roger Van der Weyden's magnificent Last Judgment; now in the musée above. On great days the volets were drawn back, and the picture exposed; magnificent red tapestries were laid upon the beds, and all was ordered for the best in this little kingdom-of-heaven upon earth.