Verba corum.
Descending the river from Bordeaux amid verdant isles, and between shores that produce some of the choicest wines of France, we soon come, on the right, to Blaye, with its chivalric memories of Orlando and the fortress that makes it the Key of Aquitaine, as it was in the days of Ausonius, who says:
“Aut iteratarum qua glarea trita viarum
Fert militarem ad Blaviam.”
At the left we pass Pauillac, the ancient villa of St. Paulinus of Nola. The Gironde soon becomes a sea. The shore lowers and is on a level with the waves. The poor hills of Saintonge escape to the north, and the white houses of Royan become visible on the far-off shore. The sea-gull flies over our head, tireless as the ceaseless waves that feed him. We see the white tower of Cordouan at a distance framed in a dazzling sea of blue and gold, out of which it rises two hundred feet above low tide, full of grace and majesty, like an enchanted castle. It is said to stand on the remains of the ancient isle of Antros, which Pomponius Mela, in the first century, places at the mouth of the Gironde. We cannot resist the temptation to climb its three hundred steps for the sake of the wonderful view over fell and flood. The foundation of this tower is lost in obscurity. Even its very name is a mystery. Some think it of Moorish derivation, and that the first light-house here was built by the Saracens—a most ridiculous supposition; for the Moors, though they destroyed a great deal in Aquitaine, certainly had no time for building, whatever their taste for architecture. Others say it was due to Louis le Débonnaire, and that he appointed a keeper to light a beacon-fire and sound a cor, or horn, night and day, to warn the sailor of the perils of the coast; but any one who ever heard the noise of the tumultuous waves breaking high against the cliff of Cordouan can imagine the inefficiency of the most vigorous lungs in such violent storms as are proverbial on the Bay of Biscay. The poor keeper would have needed the Horn of Thunder of the Armorican legend, given St. Florentius by a Norman chief to summon aid when attacked by his piratical horde, or the magic oliphant of Orlando, then kept hard by at Blaye, wherewith its owner once blew so terrible a blast that all the birds dropped dead in the forests of Roncesvalles and it was heard for twenty miles around.
The earliest historical knowledge we have of a light-house here is from a charter of the fourteenth century, by which we learn that the Black Prince built a tower on the cliff of Cordouan, with a chapel dedicated to the Blessed Virgin, kept by a hermit. In 1409 the hermit’s name was Geoffroy de Lesparre, who subsisted by levying two grossos sterlingorum on every vessel from Bordeaux laden with wine—a toll that Henry IV. of England authorized him to double.
As for the modern tower of Cordouan, Louis de Foix was
“Le gentil ingénieur de ce superbe ouvrage.”
He was one of the architects employed by Philip II. of Spain in building the Escorial, and the inventor of the mechanism by which the waters of the Tagus were carried to the highest part of the city of Toledo. Some curious things are related of this ingenious architect while in Philip’s service. The ill-conditioned prince, Don Carlos, seems to have placed confidence in him; for he commissioned De Foix to furnish him with a book heavy enough to kill a man with a single blow. The architect made one of twelve tablets of stone, six inches long and four broad, bound in steel covers embossed with gold, which weighed over fourteen pounds, and might have had for its motto the excellent mot of Callimachus on the danger of weighty books. De Thou relates the account of this momentous tome, which is also referred to in the list of Don Carlos’ expenses, and says De Foix told him the idea was by no means an original one of the prince’s, but suggested by a similar volume improvised in his grandfather’s time by Don Antonio de Acuña, Bishop of Zamora, who, confined in the castle of Simancas for taking part in the rebellion of the Comuneros, covered a brick of the size of his breviary with leather, and with this volume of decisive theology killed his keeper and made his escape. Perhaps Don Carlos overlooked the fate of the bishop, who was overtaken by the keeper’s son and hanged on the battlements of the castle of Simancas. All who have visited the Armeria Real at Madrid will remember the armor of this belligerent prelate.
De Foix also invented several curious clocks for Don Carlos, who seems to have inherited Charles V.’s taste for chronometrical instruments. Every one knows the anecdote of the servant who, suddenly entering the emperor’s room one day, overthrew the table and broke to pieces the thirty watches on it. The emperor laughed and said: “You are more successful than I, for you have discovered the only means of making them all go alike.” Among these clocks of complicated mechanism made for the prince by De Foix was one in the shape of an antique temple adorned with columns, that indicated the hours, days, months, and other things.