THE DAMAGE REPAIRED--BEAUVAIS AND COMPIEGNE
One morning as we started toward the express office a man in a wagon
passed and called out something. We did not catch it, but presently
another met us and with a glad look told us that our goods had arrived
and were now in the delivery wagon on the way to the garage. We did not
recognize either of those good souls, but they were interested in our
welfare. Our box was at the garage when we arrived there, and in a
little more it was opened and the new radiator in place. The other
repairs had been made, and once more we were complete. We decided to
start next morning to join the others in Paris.
Morning comes early on the longest days of the year, and we had eaten
our breakfast, had our belongings put into the car, and were ready to be
off by seven o'clock. What a delicious morning it was! Calm, glistening,
the dew on everything. As long as I live I shall remember that golden
morning when the Joy, aged eleven, and I went gypsying together,
following the winding roads and byways that led us through pleasant
woods, under sparkling banks, and along the poplar-planted streams of
Picardy. We did not keep to highways at all. We were in no hurry and we
took any lane that seemed to lead in the right direction, so that much
of the time we appeared to be crossing fields--fields of flowers, many
of them, scarlet poppies, often mingled with blue cornflowers and yellow
mustard--fancy the vividness of that color.
Traveling in that wandering fashion, it was noon before we got down to
Beauvais, where we stopped for luncheon supplies and to see what is
perhaps the most remarkable cathedral in the world. It is one of the
most beautiful, and, though it consists only of choir and transepts, it
is one of the largest. Its inner height, from floor to vaulting, is one
hundred and fifty-eight feet. The average ten-story building could sit
inside of it. There was once a steeple that towered to the giddy heights
of five hundred feet, but in 1573, when it had been standing three
hundred years, it fell down, from having insufficient support. The inner
work is of white stone, marble, and the whole place seems filled with
light. It was in this cool, heavenly sanctuary that Cauchon, who hounded
Joan to the stake, officiated as bishop. I never saw a place so unsuited
to a man. I should think that spire would have tumbled off then instead
of waiting until he had been dead a hundred years. There is a clock in
this church--a modern clock--that records everything, even the age of
the world, which at the moment of our visit was 5,914 years. It is a
very large affair, but we did not find it very exciting. In the public
square of Beauvais there is a bronze statue of Jeanne Laine, called
"Jeanne Hachette," because, armed with a hatchet, she led others of her
sex against Charles the Bold in 1472 and captured a banner with her own
hands.
Beauvais has many interesting things, but the day had become very warm
and we did not linger. We found some of the most satisfactory pastries I
have ever seen in France, fresh and dripping with richness; also a few
other delicacies, and, by and by, under a cool apple tree on the road to
Compiegne, the Joy and I spread out our feast and ate it and listened to
some little French birds singing, "_Vite! Vite! Vite!_" meaning that we
must be "Quick! Quick! Quick!" so they could have the crumbs.
It was at Compiegne that Joan of Arc was captured by her enemies, just a
year before that last fearful day at Rouen. She had relieved Orleans,
she had fought Patay, she had crowned the king at Rheims; she would have
had her army safely in Paris if she had not been withheld by a weakling,
influenced by his shuffling, time-serving counselors. She had delivered
Compiegne the year before, but now again it was in trouble, besieged by
the Duke of Burgundy. Joan had been kept in partial inactivity in the
Loire district below Paris during the winter, but with the news from
Compiegne she could no longer be restrained.
"I will go to my good friends of Compiegne," she said, and, taking such
force as she could muster, in number about six hundred cavalry, she went
to their relief.
From a green hill commanding the valley of the Oise we looked down upon
the bright river and pretty city which Joan had seen on that long-ago
afternoon of her final battle for France. Somewhere on that plain the
battle had taken place, and Joan's little force for the first time had
failed. There had been a panic; Joan, still fighting and trying to
rally her men, had been surrounded, dragged from her horse, and made a
prisoner. She had led her last charge.
We crossed a bridge and entered the city and stopped in the big public
square facing Leroux's beautiful statue of Joan, which the later
"friends of Compiegne" have raised to her memory. It is Joan in
semi-armor, holding aloft her banner, and on the base in old French is
inscribed "_Je Yray voir mes bons amys de Compiegne_" ("I will go to see
my good friends of Compiegne").
Many things in Compiegne are beautiful, but not many of them are very
old. Joan's statue looks toward the handsome and richly ornamented Hotel
de Ville, but Joan could not have seen it in life, for it dates a
hundred years after death. There are two handsome churches, in one or
both of which she doubtless worshiped when she had first delivered the
city; possibly a few houses of that ancient time still survive.
We looked into the churches, but they seemed better on the outside. Then
I discovered that one of our back tires was down, and we drew up in a
secluded nook at the rear of St. Jacques for repairs. It was dusk by the
time we had finished, the end of that long June day, and we had no time
to hunt for a cozy inn. So we went to a hotel which stands opposite the
great palace which the architect Gabriel built for Louis XV, and looked
across to it while we ate our dinner, and talked of our day's
wanderings, and of palaces in general and especially queens; also of
Joan, and of the beautiful roads and fields of flowers, and of the
little birds that tried to hurry us along, and so were very happy and
very tired indeed.
Next morning we visited the palace. It has been much occupied by
royalty, for Compiegne was always a favorite residence of the rulers of
France. Napoleon came there with the Empress Marie Louise, and Louis
Philippe and Napoleon III both found retirement there.
I think it could not have been a very inviting or restful home. There
are long halls and picture galleries, all with shiny floors and stiffly
placed properties, and the royal suites are just a series of square,
prettily decorated and upholstered boxes, strung together, with doors
between. One might as well set up a series of screens in a long hall.
Even with the doors shut there could not have been much sense of
privacy, certainly none of snugness. But then palaces were not meant to
be cozy. We saw the bedrooms and dressing rooms and what not of the
various queens, and we looked from an upper window down a long forest
avenue that was finer than anything inside. Then we went back to the car
and drove into the big forest for ten miles or more, to an old feudal
castle--such a magnificent old castle, all towers and turrets and
battlements--the chateau of Pierrefonds, one of the finest in France.
It stands upon a rocky height overlooking a lake, and it does not seem
so old, though it had been there forty years when Joan of Arc came, and
it looks as if it might be there about as long as the hill it stands on.
It was built by Louis of Orleans, brother of Charles VI, and the storm
of battle has raged often about its base. Here and there it still shows
the mark of bombardment, and two cannon balls stick fast in the wall of
one of its solid towers. Pierrefonds was in bad repair, had become
well-nigh a ruin, in fact, when Napoleon III, at his own expense,
engaged Viollet le Duc to restore it, in order that France might have a
perfect type of the feudal castle in its original form. It stands to-day
as complete in its structure and decoration as it was when Louis of
Orleans moved in, more than five hundred years ago, and it conveys
exactly the solid home surroundings of the mediaeval lord. It is just a
show place now, and its vast court, its chapel and its halls of state
are all splendid enough, though nothing inside can be quite so
magnificent as its mighty assemblage of towers and turrets rising above
the trees and reflecting in the blue waters of a placid lake.
It began raining before we got to Paris, so we did not stop at
Crepy-en-Valois, or Senlis, or Chantilly, or St. Denis, though all that
land has been famous for kings and castles and bloodshed from a time
farther back than the days of Caesar. We were interested in all those
things, but we agreed we could not see everything. Some things we saw as
we went by; great gray walls and crumbling church towers, and then we
were at the gates of Paris and presently threading our way through a
tangle of streets, barred, many of them, because the top of the subway
had been tumbling in a few days before and travel was dangerous. It was
Sunday, too, and the streets were especially full of automobiles and
pedestrians. It was almost impossible to keep from injuring something. I
do not care for Paris, not from the driving seat of a car.