Chapter 6 BESAN ON AND D LE.

The afternoon was so far advanced when I returned to the convent, that it was clearly impossible to reach Besan?on at five o'clock, and consequently there was time to inspect the Brothers and their buildings. The field near the convent was gay with haymakers; and the brown monks, with here and there a priest in ci-devant white, moved among the hired labourers, and stirred them up by exhortation and example,--with this difference, that while it was evidently the business of the monks so to do, the priests, on the other hand, had only taken fork in hand for the sake of a little gentle exercise.

One unhappy Jacques Bonhomme made hot and toilsome hay in thick brown clothes, plainly manufactured from a defunct Brother's gown; for, to judge from appearances, a cast-off gown is a thing unknown. It was good to see a Brother, in horn spectacles of medi?val cut, tenderly chopping a log for firewood, and peering at it through his spectacles after each stroke, as a man examines some delicate piece of natural machinery with a microscope; to see another Brother, the sphere of whose duties lay in the flour-mill, standing in the doorway with brown robe and shaven crown all powdered alike with white, and a third covered from head to foot with sawdust; or, best of all, to see an antique Brother, with scarecrow legs, and low shoes which had presumably been in his possession or that of his predecessors for a long series of years, wheeling a barrow of liquid manure, with his gown looped up high by means of stout whipcord and an arrangement of large brass rings. The Brother whose business it was to do such cooking as might be required by visitors, grinned in the most friendly and engaging manner from ear to ear when he was looked at; and, by fixing him steadily with the eye, he could be kept for considerable spaces of time standing in the middle of the kitchen, knife in hand, with the corners of his mouth out of sight round his broad cheeks. His ample front was decked with a blue apron, suspended from his shoulders, and confined round the convexity of his waist by an old strap which no respectable costermonger would have used as harness. The soup served was by courtesy called soupe maigre, but it was in fact soupe maigre diluted by many homoeopathic myriads, and the Brother showed much curiosity as to my opinion of its taste--a curiosity which I could not satisfy without hurting his professional pride. When that course was finished, the large-faced cook suggested an omelette, as the most substantial thing allowed on eves, proceeding to draw the materials from a closet which so fully shared in the general abstinence from water as a means of cleansing, that I shut my eyes upon all further operations, and ate the eventual omelette in faith. Its excellence called forth such hearty commendations, that there seemed to be some danger of the mouth not coming right again. Then salads, and bread and butter, and wine, and various kinds of cheese were brought, which made in all a very fair dinner for a fast-day.

The culinary monk knew nothing of the history of his convent, beyond the bare year of its foundation, and displayed a monotonous dead level of ignorance on all topographical and historical questions: to him the Pain d'Abbaye [38] meant nothing further than the staff of life there provided, and he neither knew himself nor could recommend any Brother who knew anything about the glacière. He was a German, and we talked of his native Baiern and the modern glories of his capital; and when his questions elicited a declaration of my profession, he passed up to Saxony, and pinned me with Luther. Finding that I objected to being so pinned, and repudiated something of that which his charge involved, he waived Luther, of whom he knew nothing beyond his name, and came down upon me triumphantly with the word Protestant. I explained to him, of course, that the worthy Elector, and his friends who protested, had not much to do with the Anglican branch of the Church Catholic; and then the old task had to be gone through of assuring the assembled Brothers that we in England have Sacraments, have Orders, have a Trinitarian Creed.

At length, about half-past three, we started for Besan?on, paying of course à volonté for food and entertainment, as we did not choose to qualify as paupers. The driver told me on the way that there was another glacière at Vaise, a village three or four kilomètres from Besan?on, and at no great distance from the road by which we should approach the town; so, when we reached the crest above Morre, where the road passes the final ridge by means of a tunnel, I paid the carriage off, and walked to the village of Vaise. The public-house knew of the glacière--knew indeed of two,--further still, kept the keys of both. This was good news, though the idea of keys in connection with an ice-cave was rather strange; and I proposed to organise an expedition at once to the glacières. The male half of the auberge declared that he was forbidden to open them to strangers, except by special order from a certain monsieur in Besan?on; but the female half, scenting centimes, stated her belief that the monsieur in Besan?on could never wish them to turn away a stranger who had come so many kilomètres through the dust to see the ice. She put the proposed disobedience in so persuasive and Christian a form, that I was obliged to take the husband's side,--not that he was in any need of support, for he had been longer married than Adam was, and showed no signs of giving way. It turned out, after all, that though there was no doubt about the existence of the glacières, there was equally no doubt that they were glacières artificielles, being simply ice-houses dug in the side of a hill, and the property of a glacier in Besan?on; so that my friend the driver had sent me to a mare's-nest.

The pathway across the hills to Besan?on was rather intricate, and by good fortune an old Frenchman appeared, who was returning from his work at a neighbouring church, and served as companion and guide. He had bid farewell to sixty some years before, and, being a builder, had been going up and down a ladder all day, with full and empty hottes, to an extent which outdid the Shanars of missionary meetings; and yet he walked faster than any foreigner of my experience. He talked in due proportion, and told some interesting details of the bombardment of Besan?on, which he remembered well. When he learned that I was not German, but English, he told me they did not say Anglais there, but Gaudin,--I was a Gaudin. This he repeated persistently many times, with an air worthy of General Cyrus Choke, and half convinced me that there was something in it, and that I might after all be a Gaudin. It was not till some hours after, that I remembered the indelible impression made by the piety of speech of recent generations of Englishmen upon the French nation at large, and thus was enabled to trace the origin of the name Gaudin. The old man evidently believed that it was the proper thing to call an Englishman by that name; thus reminding me of a story told of a French soldier in the Austrian service during the long early wars with Switzerland. The Austrians called the Swiss, in derision, Kühmelkers--a term more opprobrious than bouviers; and it is said that, after the battle of Frastens--one of the battles of the Suabian war,--a Frenchman threw himself at the feet of some Grisons soldiers, and innocently prayed thus for quarter; 'Très-chers, très-honorables, et très-dignes Kühmelkers! au nom de Dieu, ne me tuez pas!'

The town of Besan?on seems to spend its Sunday in fishing, and is apparently well contented with that very limited success which is wont to attend a Frenchman's efforts in this branch of le sport. There is a proverb in the patois of Vaud which says 'Kan on vau dau pesson, sé fo molli;'[39] and on this the Bisuntians act, standing patiently half-way up the thigh in the river, as the Swiss on the Lake of Geneva and other lakes may be seen to do. It is all very well to wade for a good salmon cast, or to spend some hours in a swift-foot[40] Scotch stream for the sake of a lively basket of trout; but to stand in a Sunday coat and hat, and 2-1/2 feet of water, watching a large bung hopelessly unmoved on the surface, is a thing reserved for a Frenchman indulging in a weekly intoxication of Sabbatical sport, under the delirious form of the chasse aux goujons.

Clean as the town within the circuit of the river is, the houses which overhang the water on the other side are picturesque and dirty in the extreme, story rising above story, and balcony above balcony. It does not increase their beauty, and to a fastidious nose it must militate against their eligibility as places of residence, that there is apparently but one drain, an external one, which follows the course of the pillars supporting the various balconies: nevertheless, from the opposite side of the river, and when the wind sets the other way, they are sufficiently attractive. In this quarter is found the finest church, the Madeleine, with a very effective piece of sculpture at the east end. The sculpture is arranged on the bottom and farther side of a sort of cage, which is hung outside the church, but is visible from the inside through a corresponding opening in the east wall. The subject of the sculpture is 'The Sepulchre,' and the ends of the cage or box are composed of rich yellow glass, through which the external light streams into the cave of the Sepulchre; and when the church itself is becoming dark, the effect produced by the light from the evening sky, passing through the deep-toned glass, and softly illuminating the Sepulchre, is indescribably solemn.

When Besan?on was supplied by the aqueduct with the waters of Arcier, there was a great abundance of baths, as the remains discovered in digging new foundations show; but in the present state of the town such things are not easily met with. The floating baths on the river are appropriated to the other sex, and the only thing approaching to a male bath was of a nature entirely new to me, being constructed as follows:--There is a water-mill in the town, with a low weir stretching across the river, down which the water rushes with no very great violence. At the foot of this weir a row of sentry-boxes is placed, approached by planks, and in these boxes the adventurer finds his bath.[41]

BATH IN THE DOUBS, AT BESAN?ON.

A stout piece of wood-work is fixed horizontally along the face of the weir, and has the effect of throwing the downward water out of its natural direction, and causing it to describe an arch, so that it descends with much force on to the weir at a point below the wood-work. Here two planks are placed, forming a seat and a support for the back, and a little lower still another plank for the feet to rest upon, without which the bather would have a good chance of being washed away. The water boils noisily and violently on all sides and in all directions, coming down upon the subject's shoulders with a heavy thud, which calls to mind the tender years when something softer than a cane was used, and sends him forth like a fresh-boiled lobster. All this, with towels, is not dear at fourpence.

The citadel is the great sight of Besan?on, and the polite Colonel-commandant attends at his office at convenient hours to give passes. What it might be to storm the position under the excitement of the sport of war, I cannot say; but certainly it is a most trying affair on a hot Sunday's afternoon, even when all is made smooth, and the gates are opened, by a comprehensive pass. The wall mentioned by C?sar as a great feature of the place cut the site of the citadel off from the town, and many signs of it were found when the cathedral of S. Stephen was built, the unfortunate church which went down before the exigencies of a siege under Louis XIV. The barrack-master proved to be a most interesting man, knowing many details of C?sar's life and campaigns which I suspect were not known to that captain himself. He had served in Algeria, and assented to the proposition that more soldiers died there of absinthe than of Arabs, stating his conviction that three-fourths of the whole deaths are caused by that pernicious extract of wormwood, and that he ought himself to have died of it long ago. He pointed out the difference between the massive masonry of the period of the Spanish occupation and the less impressive work of more recent times, and showed the dungeon from which Marshal Bourmont bought his escape, in the time of the first Napoleon.

The floor of one of the little look-out towers is composed of a tombstone, representing a priest in full ecclesiastical dress, and my question as to how it came there elicited the following story:--When Louis XIV. was besieging the citadel, he placed his head-quarters, and a strong battery, on the summit of the Mont Chaudane,[42] which commands the citadel on one side as the Brégille does on the other. Among the besieged was a monk named Schmidt, probably one of the Low-country men to whom the Franche Comté was then a sort of home, as forming part of the dominions of Spain; and this monk was the most active supporter of the defence, against the large party within the walls which was anxious to render the town. He was also an admirable shot; and on one of the last days of the siege, as he stood in the little tower where the tombstone now lies, the King and his staff rode to the front of the plateau on the Mont Chaudane to survey the citadel; whereupon some one pointed out to Schmidt that now he had a fair chance of putting an end at once to the siege and the invasion. Accordingly, he took a musket from a soldier and aimed at the King; but before firing he changed his aim, remarking, that he, a priest, ought not to destroy the life of a man, and so he only killed the horse, giving the Majesty of France a roll in the mud. When the town was taken, the King enquired for the man who killed his horse, and asked the priest whether he could have killed the rider instead, had he wished to do so. 'Certainly,' Schmidt replied, and related the facts of the case. Louis informed him, that had he been a soldier, he should have been decorated for his skill and his impulse of mercy; but, being a priest, he should be hung. The sentence was carried out, and the priest's body was buried in the floor of the tower from which he had spared the King's life. If this be true, it was one of the most unkingly deeds ever done.[43]

This siege took place in the second invasion or conquest of the Franche Comté by Louis XIV., when Besan?on held out for nine days against Vauban and the King: on the first occasion it had surrendered to Condé after one day's siege, making the single stipulation that the Holy Shroud should not be removed from the town.[44] The Saincte Suaire was the richest ecclesiastical treasure of the Bisuntians, being one of the two most genuine of the many Suaires, the other being that of Turin, which was supported by Papal Infallibility. Both were brought from the Crusades; and the one was presented to Besan?on in 1206, the other to Turin in 1353. Bede tells a story of the proving of a Shroud by fire in the eighth century, by one of the caliphs; and as its dimensions were 8 feet by 4, like that of Besan?on, while the Shroud of Turin measured 12 feet by 3, the people of Besan?on claimed that theirs was the one spoken of by Bede.

The Cathedral of Besan?on is no longer S. Stephen, since the destruction of that church by Louis XIV. The small Church of the Citadel is now dedicated to that saint, an inscription on the wall stating that it takes the place of the larger church, ex urbis obsidio anno 1674 lapsae, and offering an indulgence of 100 days for every visit paid to it, with the sensible proviso una duntaxat vice per diem. Soldiers not being generally made of the confessing sex, or of confessing material, there is only one confessional provided for the 6,000 souls which the citadel can accommodate.

The Cavalry Barracks are in the lower part of the town, and near them is a large building with evident traces of ecclesiastical architecture on the outside. It is, in fact, a very fine church converted into stables, retaining its interior features in excellent preservation. Under the corn-bin lies a lady who had two husbands and fifteen children, Antigone in parentes, Porcia in conjuges, Sempronia in liberos; while a few yards further east, less agreeably placed, is an ecclesiastic of the Gorrevod family, who reckoned Prince and Bishop and Baron among his titles. The nave of this Church of S. Michael accommodates thirty horses, and the north aisle thirteen; the south is considered more select, and is boarded off for the decani, in the shape of officers' chargers. The north side of the chancel gives room for six horses, and the south side for a row of saddle-blocks. It had been an oversight on the part of the original architect of the church that no place was prepared for the daily hay; a fault which the military restorers have remedied by improvising a lady-chapel, where the hay for the day is placed in the morning. With Spelman in my mind, I asked if the stables were not unhealthy; but the soldiers said they were the healthiest in the town.[45]

The Glacière of Vaise had proved, as has been seen, to be a mare's-nest; and yet, after all, it produced a foal; for while I was endeavouring to overcome the evening heat of Besan?on in a spécialité for ice, I found that the owner of the establishment was also the owner of the two glacières of Vaise; and in the course of the conversation which followed, he told me of the existence of a natural glacière near the village of Arc-sous-Cicon, twenty kilomètres from Pontarlier, which he had himself seen. As I had arranged to meet my sisters at Neufchatel, in two days' time, for the purpose of visiting a glacière in the Val de Travers, this piece of information came very opportunely, and I determined to attempt both glacières with them.

Some of the trains from Besan?on stop for an hour at D?le in passing towards Switzerland by way of Pontarlier, and anyone who is interested in the Burgundian and Spanish wars of France should take this opportunity of seeing what may be seen of the town of D?le and its massive church-tower. The sieges of D?le made it very famous in the later middle ages, more especially the long siege under Charles d'Amboise, at the crisis of which that general recommended his soldiers to leave a few of the people for seed,[46] and the old sobriquet la Joyeuse was punningly changed to la Dolente. It has had other claims upon fame; for if Besan?on possessed one of the two most authentic Holy Shrouds, D?le was the resting-place of one of the undoubted miraculous Hosts, which had withstood the flames in the Abbey of Faverney. It was for the reception of this Host that the advocates of the Brotherhood of Monseigneur Saint Yves built the Sainte Chapelle at D?le.[47]

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