Another of the guardian castles of Cluny, that to which in dangerous times the treasures, charts, and title deeds of the Abbey were taken, was the Château de Lourdon. It was pillaged in 1575 by the partisans of the Duc d'Alençon, who burned so many of the original papers that Claude de Guise, after his reconciliation with Henry IV., obtained letters patent rendering valid the existing copies of the parchments. In 1632, Richelieu, who had obtained possession of the Abbey of Cluny, ordered the demolition of the donjon and castle of Lourdon, a command so faithfully carried out that nothing was left of the fortress, except what is to be seen to-day—a ruined ivy-hung wall, its line broken by a round tower, through whose windows you can see the concierge moving, and by a curious row of great columns, like organ pipes, now generally supposed to be the remains of a kind of mediæval tennis court. From the castle rising high above the bush-covered rocks, you can look down over the grape vines to the village of Lourdon, and the hills of the Grosne valley. Looking up at it, through the houses of the village street, it must have appeared a not unworthy guardian of a trust so great as were the treasures of Cluny.
The best way to get there by the valley road from Cluny, is to turn up the hill when you come to a small sentinel tower. If you ask the way, you will probably be told, as we were, to turn at the next lane, which is longer, less convenient, and gives a much less striking approach to the castle. Persistent mis-direction of strangers is a common Burgundian failing.
Those who have wandered about the streets of Cluny may have happened upon the late fifteenth century, or early sixteenth century, house of the Prat family, the ancestors of the poet Lamartine, whose name is frequently heard by travellers in the Mâconnais or the Dauphiné; though the nation as a whole, soon forgot him, after that swiftly rising wave of latin enthusiasm had swept him into the seats of the mighty, and, receding, had dragged him with it, to face, as best he might, the obscure, penniless life of a literary hack.
His birthplace, at Milly, is not now in existence; but the prospect of seeing the family Château de Saint Point, where part of his youth, and some later years of retirement, were passed, tempted me to pay a visit to that valley. In a very improbable, though naturally written and pathetic study of rustic life, "Le Tailleur de Pierres de St. Point"—he who died of that, unhappily, rare malady, the love of God—we have Lamartine's own description of his home.
From the mountain side projects a low hill "dominated at its summit by an old castle flanked by compact towers, and by the notched spire of a romanesque church tower. At the foot of the hill are pastures bordered with alders, cherry and large nut trees, between whose trunks can be seen the walls, roofs and rustic bridge of a hamlet built in the shadow of the castle and comprising fifteen or twenty cottages of workmen, small farmers or shopkeepers, all grouped around the village church. These old towers, undermined at their bases by the weather, and cracked by the weight of stone above them, shorn of the spires at their summits, are useless to-day, except to flank a heavy square mass of naked stone, pierced with a winding stair and several vaulted rooms—such is my abode.... Thence the view, falling and rising, extends over the most beautiful part of the valley of St. Point. One's glance, following the rapid slope of the pastures, rests upon a field through the middle of which runs the river 'Vallonge.' Great nut trees with bronze foliage, motionless as metal leaves, poplars with trunks storm-twisted, and with foliage more hairy and whiter than the head of an old man, European cypresses, alders, birches, willows rescued by me, twenty-five years ago now, from the bill of the tree-trimmer, leaning from bank to bank of the river they love and are loved by, interwoven over its course, form a lofty, floating, capricious vault of foliage of every tint, a very mosaic of vegetation. The lightest airs of summer sway this moving curtain, and summon thence waves of sound, breathings, the watery sheen of leaves, flights of birds and vegetable scents, which gladden the eyes, vary the outlook, and rise in sweet sounds and wandering fragrances to the balcony of my house."
This balcony was the construction in sculptured stone, in imitation of the old Gothic Balustrades of Oxford, that he had added to the principal façade. Here the peacocks perching, day and night, bordered its heavy stones with a row of living caryatides, as they spread their brilliant tails to the sun.[95]
Meanwhile, with such passages as these in my mind, I was making for the village. Having climbed the winding staircase that leads up to the terraced churchyard, I saw, as I drew near, across the tangled graves, the tomb of Lamartine, a pretentious, but quite unsuccessful, production, in bastard gothic style, the interior hung round with horrible wreaths of artificial flowers. On a pedestal was a bust of the poet, with a metal urn on each side, and, below, a recumbent statue of his wife, and memorials of other descendants.
It was with a feeling of intense relief that I turned from the artificial to the real, to the monument in which nature's art, that is not artifice, has immortalized the memory of Lamartine.