Autun — shewing Cathedral and Mediæval Towers
A bend to the left brought us into Couhard, a straggling group of dishevelled cottages and huts lining the Ruisseau de la Toison, that bubbles merrily along the side of the hill. It is a dilapidated, picturesque, tangled village, given over to ducks and dirt, and to washerwomen, who, like flies in summer, settle upon the running waters of France, to wash their toisons d'or.
"Quite an ancient, conservative, stagnant village," we were saying to ourselves; "built beside a Roman burial ground, and itself going its dirty way to death"—when, suddenly, we made a discovery. Couhard is not conservative. On the contrary, it is advanced. Before us, on a placard, we read: "Association des Femmes de Saône et Loire. Les Femmes doivent Voter." And they tell you there is no feminist movement in France!
Here is the Pierre de Couhard; a gaunt, uncouth, pointed mass of rubble, rising from the hillside, in the midst of a little tangled island—the dust bin of the village—where every ill weed grows. 'Tis a characteristic setting for a Burgundian monument.
But the stone is impressive. Inchoate, formless, it yet suggests a lost form, that of a corpse long-exposed, or of the mysterious, human-inhuman figure, that the mad sculptor, in Andreev's story, hewed out, after he had talked with one returned from the dead, and had gazed deep into death's basilisk eyes.[18]
A close inspection reveals the truth—that the Pierre de Couhard was in the form of a quadrangular pyramid upon a cubical base—the lower part faced with large blocks of sandstone, the pyramidal portion with limestone. All the facing has suffered the usual fate of similar work in France—it formed the quarry from which the peasants of Couhard built and maintained their village. On the south-east side of the pyramid are two holes, bored about the year 1640, with the intention of discovering whether the monument was hollow within.[19] It is now believed to be solid throughout. The Aeduen Society, and others, have undertaken excavations at various times; but local antiquaries have not yet discovered any cella containing coins or relics that determine the date of erection, which, however, M. de Fontenay, with good reason, assigns to the reign of Vespasian (a.d. 69-79).
