[113] "Songs of old France," Percy Allen.
[CHAPTER IX]
To the outward eye Chalon-Sur-Saône is no more than a thriving, modern, commercial town, containing little of interest to the antiquarian; though the stir of life on the busy wharves may prove enticing to those who weary, sometimes, of the sleepiness of country towns, and the faded glories of mediæval cities. Yet, for our part, especially when we are in France, we prefer the shadows of the past to the realities of the present; and, no sooner were we in Châlon, than we set ourselves to picturing the town as it had been, when the river was the scene of royal pageants, when three golden bands girdled the city walls, and great tournaments were held on the island where bold knights laid lance in rest round the banner of La Dame des Pleurs.
One of the last of the river pageants was in 1371, when the Duke of Anjou gave rendez-vous to Philippe le Hardi, his brother, at the papal city of Avignon. The Duke embarked at Châlon with a great suite. In the first vessel was Philip and his principal barons; then came the Chancellor's boat, with other nobles; then the barges of the kitchen, the wardrobe, the wine-cellar, and the fish store. The Duke appeared with great éclat at Avignon, and offered the pope a courser, a hackney, two flagons, and two basins of silver-gilt. He also dealt so generously with the cardinals, that, to enable him to return, he was obliged to pawn his jewels with a Lombard, as security for a loan of twenty thousand francs.[114]
But I want now to go back to earlier days, even, than those—to the year 589, when Gontran was king of Burgundy, and had his court at Châlon—whenever his wars with Childebert and Chilperic allowed him to hold court anywhere. Gontran, it was, who, twelve years before, in 577, had founded two miles away eastward, in the plain, a great abbey in honour of St. Marcel, the apostle of the Châlonnais, martyred upon that very spot. Gontran too, it was, who rebuilt the walls of Châlon, broken down by the Huns, and ornamented them, for a belt, with three bands of golden stone; so that, in after years, the early historians and the poets, singing of the city by the Saône, hailed it as Orbandale, the town "aux bandelettes d'or." That is why, to-day, the arms of Châlon are three golden circles, two and one, on a field of azure.
I am going to tell here, briefly, the story of Bertille, the heroine of the golden bands—surnamed, not too happily, La Judith Châlonnaise.[115]
In the year 589, there dwelt in the royal city of Châlon, a worthy man, Vulfrand by name, and his wife, Ludwige. They had a daughter, Bertille, supple, graceful, dignified, and so lovely and virtuous, that she was the pride, not of her parents only, but of all the town, famous though it then was for producing beautiful women. Bertille was nearly seventeen years old, and she had been brought up in the Christian faith, at a time when that religion, then still young, needed every proselyte it could win. And she was her parents' only child.