Starting on the road to Abbeville, and passing the large beetroot manufactories which abound in Picardy, we gain a beautiful view of the fertile vale of the Somme; but our destination is eastward, to visit St Riquier. Two monks from Bangor are said to have preached the gospel here 590 A.D., and incurring the anger of the idolatrous people, they were attacked and would have perished but for the help of one of their converts named Riquier. After their departure he became a priest, and continued the good work, founding an abbey, which King Dagobert richly endowed. This exquisite building was built in the form of a triangle, as a symbol of the Trinity. The number three was everywhere reproduced; three doors opened into the vestibule, three chapels rose at the angles, three altars, three pulpits, the three symbols of Constantinople, of St Athanasius, and the apostles. Three hundred monks and thirty-three choristers sang in the processions, and finally the abbot fed daily three hundred poor persons.
Whilst the ruthless hands of the whitewasher have destroyed innumerable frescoes, there still remain two large mural paintings in the treasury of this church, one being a representation of the translation of the relics of St Riquier, the other a Dance of Death. The latter is divided into three compartments; in the first are three skeletons, one digging a grave, another holding a spade (the emblem of demolition), the third an arrow, the instrument of death. Richly-dressed well-mounted cavaliers appear in the second, setting out for the chase with falcons on their wrists; but at the sight of the skeletons the horses rear, and one of the falcons is flying away. In the last, persons of every rank are walking together to the grave; a wild and poetical teaching, which recalled, in the midst of the inequalities of the feudal days, the certainty of their all meeting in the final resting-place.
It was in these well-known funereal allegories that religious thought took refuge, whilst burlesque associations or brotherhoods traversed the towns in disorganised bands, and the troubadours sang their romances of ladies catching hearts in their nets to put into the box of forgetfulness. Christian art endeavoured to bring men back to the remembrance of God by shewing them death under various aspects. Sometimes the artist placed him with a coffin under his arm in the cortège of kings; or as a guest at the marriage-feast standing behind the bride; or as a wood-cutter lopping off branches laden with nobles and citizens; as if to illustrate that however high the position in this world, all must at last fall.
To St Riquier, Charlemagne loved to repair, and he made it a centre of learning, like Tours, Metz, and St Gall. Some remains of the old towers of his day still remain, as well as the mosaic roses which he sent for from Rome to adorn it. In the porch were buried two abbots who were killed in 853, in one of the numerous incursions of the Normans. Their bodies were found wrapped in sheep-skins, when the beautiful church of the fifteenth century rose from the ashes of the old one. Among the many statues of saints which adorn the main portal is a very noble one of Joan of Arc, holding a half-broken lance; her eyes are cast down, and the expression is that of a perfectly beautiful but sad countenance. She was confined in the castle for a few days.
Upon the beauties of Amiens we must not dwell; it was a centre for the cultivation of poetry, sculpture, and the fine arts throughout the middle ages. The inhabitants worked at its glorious cathedral for sixty-eight years, forming a kind of camp, and relieving each other as they cut the stones, singing canticles the while. The tall spire was destroyed by a thunderbolt in 1527; but two zealous village carpenters determined to rebuild it; and six years later it was finished. Many monograms testify to the visits of master-masons, who came to admire the work of the Picardy peasants; the eighteen hundred medallions detailing the history of the world, besides many bas-reliefs carved by the old workmen of Amiens. Abbeville is also a most interesting old town, not only for its past monuments, but as the home of that modern geologist M. de Perthes, who has left his museum of relics to the city. We must bid adieu to Picardy, to its hardy peasants, delicious cider, and well-cultivated plains with regret, as being not the least interesting among the French provinces, and well worthy the notice of the wandering traveller.
HELENA, LADY HARROGATE.
CHAPTER XXVII.—AT THE STANNARIES.
‘We shall have a delightful day,’ said young Lady Alice joyously, as the sweet scent of the bruised heather and the steam of the wet earth came floating on the breeze, and the clouds rolled off majestically seawards, leaving the broad surface of Dartmoor, like a purple robe dashed with green, flecked and dappled by the dancing sunbeams. ‘A delightful day for our peep at the old Stannaries,’ repeated the girl. ‘The air will be all the fresher and the weather steadier, for the heavy shower of this morning.’
Lady Alice, the youngest and, some said, the cleverest of the Earl’s daughters, was an indulged child, and there was a carriage at High Tor which she regarded as her very own. This was a low wagonette, built of light osier-work, lined with dark blue, and drawn by a hairy-heeled pony, quite as shaggy as a bear, and not much bigger than a Newfoundland dog. The villagers for miles around were tolerably familiar with the jingle of the bells that were attached to the pony’s collar; but on the present occasion the boy in livery who held the reins had been bidden to strike into one of the rugged roads that led into the moor itself, where hamlets were scarce, and even isolated dwellings few and far between.