"La colonne, Madame, est là bas, dans la prairie."
My wife danced for joy. It was a talking hen. The people were really bewitched! "How lovely!" But I knew all the time that she was wrong. The hen had not spoken—not a word. No such luck. It was that dark girl, who had been watching us from the shed by the house. So we just thanked her, for politeness sake, and walked sadly down the hill towards the Colonne. I looked round. The hen was scratching again.
We found the Colonne at last—a fine one, of the composite Corinthian style, its shaft beautifully ornamented with the favourite Roman leaf pattern. Round the base are eight statues in relief. Every antiquary in the kingdom has puzzled his brains over the motif of this column; and, except Courtepée, who says that "selon toute apparence c'est un monument sépulcral,"[187] and Lempereur and Montfauçon, who respectively believed it to be a Gaulish tomb, and a religious monument, all agree that it is in memory of a great victory.
But what victory? One has said that it commemorates the triumph of Cæsar over the Helvetii b.c. 58; another that it was raised by the Emperor Claude, conqueror of the Goths; others believe it to have been erected by the Aedui to Maximian Hercules, after his victory over the Bagaudes in 286 a.d.; finally the Burgundian, Girault, maintains that the monument remembers the victory of Silius over Sacrovir in 22 a.d.[188]
Beyond expressing a doubt whether the column is of later date than 100 a.d., and my conviction that it is triumphal not monumental, I venture no opinion upon any of these interesting theories. The antiquarians must settle that among themselves.
Meanwhile, let me inform the visitor who may find himself there in the autumn, that blackberries of a very choice quality grow in those prairies of the Colonne. I devoured them steadily, while the cows chewed their cud, and my wife sketched. She sketched; but she was not happy, as she usually is when thus occupied. A cruel wind came out of the north, and chilled her to the bone. She shivered; almost she wept. I, too, in spite of blackberries, was all comfortless within, and felt an uncanny sensation in the small of my back.
"Come along, Marjorie; you were quite right. It was the hen who spoke. This place is bewitched." She cheered up.
"How lovely! I was so afraid witches had quite died out."