BESANÇON AND DÔLE.
The afternoon was so far advanced when I returned to the convent, that
it was clearly impossible to reach Besançon 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
mediæval 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 Besançon, 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 Besançon, 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 Besançon; but the female half, scenting centimes, stated her
belief that the monsieur in Besançon 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
Besançon; so that my friend the driver had sent me to a mare's-nest.
The pathway across the hills to Besançon 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
Besançon, 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 Besançon 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.
[Illustration: BATH IN THE DOUBS, AT BESANÇON.]
When Besançon 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] 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 Besançon, 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 Cæsar 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 Cæsar'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 Besançon 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 Besançon 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 Besançon, while the Shroud of Turin measured 12
feet by 3, the people of Besançon claimed that theirs was the one spoken
of by Bede.
The Cathedral of Besançon 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 Besançon 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 Neufchâtel, 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 Besançon stop for an hour at Dôle 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 Dôle and its
massive church-tower. The sieges of Dôle 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 Besançon possessed one of the two most authentic Holy
Shrouds, Dôle 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 Dôle.[47]
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 38: One of the rights of the sovereigns of Burgundy was known
by this name. The sovereign had the power of sending one soldier
incapacitated by war to each abbey in the County, and the authorities of
the abbey were bound to make him a prebendary for life. In 1602, after
the siege of Ostend, the Archduke Albert exercised this right in favour
of his wounded soldiers, forcing lay-prebendaries upon almost all the
abbeys of the County of Burgundy. The Archduchess Isabella attempted to
quarter such a prebendary upon the Abbey of Migette, a house of nuns,
but the inmates successfully refused to receive the warrior among them
(Dunod, _Hist. de l'Église de Besançon_, i. 367). For the similar right
in the kingdom of France, see Pasquier, _Recherches de la France_, l.
xii. p. 37. Louis XIV. did not exercise this right after his conquest of
the Franche Comté, perhaps because the Hôtel des Invalides, to which the
Church was so large a contributor, met all his wants.]
[Footnote 39: '_Quand on veut du poisson, il se faut mouiller_;'
referring probably to the method of taking trout practised in the Ormont
valley, the habitat of the purest form of the patois. A man wades in the
Grand' Eau, with a torch in one hand to draw the fish to the top, and a
sword in the other to kill them when they arrive there; a second man
wading behind with a bag, to pick up the pieces.]
[Footnote 40: 'Swift-foot Almond, and land-louping Braan.']
[Footnote 41: The sentry-box is omitted in the accompanying
illustration.]
[Footnote 42: Believed to be derived from _Collis Dianæ_. Dunod found
that _Chaudonne_ was an early form of the name, and so preferred _Collis
Dominarum_, with reference to the house of nuns placed there.]
[Footnote 43: Schmidt was not without the support of example in the
indulgence of his warlike tastes. Thirty-eight years before, the
religious took so active a part in the defence of Dôle against Louis
XIII., that the Capuchin Father d'Iche had the direction of the
artillery; and when an officer of the enemy had seized the Brother
Claude by the cowl, the Father Barnabas made the officer loose his hold
by slaying him with a demi-pique. When Arbois was besieged by Henry IV.,
the Sieur Chanoine Pécauld is specially mentioned as proving himself a
_bon harquebouzier._]
[Footnote 44: There is a painting by Vander Meulen, representing this
siege, in the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge.]
[Footnote 45: The Church of S. Philibert, in Dijon, now a forage
magazine, has an inscription let into the wall almost ludicrously out of
keeping with the present desecrated state of the building,--_Dilexi
Domine Decorem Domus tuæ_, 1648.]
[Footnote 46: 'Qu'on les laisse pour grain!']
[Footnote 47: In the year 1648, it was suspected that some decay was
going on in the material of this Host, and the following translation
from the Latin describes the investigation entered into by the Dean and
a large body of clergy and laity, in order to quiet the public
mind:--'Après que tous les susnommés (viz. the Dean, Canons, President
of the Parliament, &c.) étant présents eurent adorés le S. Sacrement, la
custode fut ouverte avec tout le respect possible; et alors le dit Doyen
aperçut un vermisseau roulé en spirale, qu'il saisit avec la pointe
d'une épingle et plaça sur un corporal où chacun l'examina; puis on le
brûla avec un charbon pris dans l'encensoir, et ses cendres furent
jetées dans la piscine. On put alors constater tout le dommage que ce
misérable petit animal avait causé aux espèces sacrées dont les débris
ici tombaient en poussière, là se trouvaient rongés et lacérés, de telle
sorte que l'Hostie n'avait presque plus rien de sa forme circulaire, et
présentait de profondes découpures partout où le vermisseau s'était
livré à ses sinueus es évolutions.']
* * * * *