III.

I have mentioned the church of Saint Martin,

which was for many years the sacred spot, the shrine

of pilgrimage, of Tours. Originally the simple burial-

place of the great apostle who in the fourth century

Christianized Gaul, and who, in his day a brilliant

missionary and worker of miracles, is chiefly known

to modem fame as the worthy that cut his cloak in

two at the gate of Amiens to share it with a beggar

(tradition fails to say, I believe, what he did with the

other half), the abbey of Saint Martin, through the

Middle Ages, waxed rich and powerful, till it was

known at last as one of the most luxurious religious

houses in Christendom, with kings for its titular ab-

bots (who, like Francis I., sometimes turned and

despoiled it) and a great treasure of precious things.

It passed, however, through many vicissitudes. Pillaged

by the Normans in the ninth century and by the

Huguenots in the sixteenth, it received its death-blow

from the Revolution, which must have brought to

bear upon it an energy of destruction proportionate

to its mighty bulk. At the end of the last century

a huge group of ruins alone remained, and what we

see to-day may be called the ruin of a ruin. It is

difficult to understand how so vast an ediface can

have been so completely obliterated. Its site is given

up to several ugly streets, and a pair of tall towers,

separated by a space which speaks volumes as to the

size of the church, and looking across the close-pressed

roofs to the happier spires of the cathedral, preserved

for the modern world the memory of a great fortune,

a great abuse, perhaps, and at all events a great pen-

alty. One may believe that to this day a consider-

able part of the foundations of the great abbey is

buried in the soil of Tours. The two surviving towers,

which are dissimilar in shape, are enormous; with

those of the cathedral they form the great landmarks

of the town. One of them bears the name of the Tour

de l'Horloge; the other, the so-called Tour Charle-

magne, was erected (two centuries after her death)

over the tomb of Luitgarde, wife of the great Em-

peror, who died at Tours in 800. I do not pretend to

understand in what relation these very mighty and

effectually detached masses of masonry stood to each

other, but in their gray elevation and loneliness they

are striking and suggestive to-day; holding their hoary

heads far above the modern life of the town, and

looking sad and conscious, as they had outlived all

uses. I know not what is supposed to have become

of the bones of the blessed saint during the various

scenes of confusion in which they may have got mis-

laid; but a mystic connection with his wonder-working

relics may be perceived in a strange little sanctuary

on the left of the street, which opens in front of the

Tour Charlemagne, - the rugged base of which, by

the way, inhabited like a cave, with a diminutive

doorway, in which, as I passed, an old woman stood

cleaning a pot, and a little dark window decorated

with homely flowers, would be appreciated by a

painter in search of "bits." The present shrine of

Saint Martin is enclosed (provisionally, I suppose) in

a very modem structure of timber, where in a dusky

cellar, to which you descend by a wooden staircase

adorned with votive tablets and paper roses, is placed

a tabernacle surrounded by twinkling tapers and pros-

trate worshippers. Even this crepuscular vault, how-

ever, fails, I think, to attain solemnity; for the whole

place is strangely vulgar and garish. The Catholic

church, as churches go to-day, is certainly the most

spectacular; but it must feel that it has a great fund

of impressiveness to draw upon when it opens such

sordid little shops of sanctity as this. It is impos-

sible not to be struck with the grotesqueness of such

an establishment, as the last link in the chain of a

great ecclesiastical tradition.

In the same street, on the other side, a little below,

is something better worth your visit than the shrine

of Saint Martin. Knock at a high door in a white

wall (there is a cross above it), and a fresh-faced

sister of the convent of the Petit Saint Martin will

let you into the charming little cloister, or rather

fragment of a cloister. Only one side of this exqui-

site structure remains, but the whole place is effective.

In front of the beautiful arcade, which is terribly

bruised and obliterated, is one of those walks of inter-

laced _tilleuls_ which are so frequent in Touraine, and

into which the green light filters so softly through a

lattice of clipped twigs. Beyond this is a garden,

and beyond the garden are the other buildings of the

Convent, - where the placid sisters keep a school, - a

test, doubtless, of placidity. The imperfect arcade,

which dates from the beginning of the sixteenth cen-

tury (I know nothing of it but what is related in Mrs.

Pattison's "Rennaissance in France") is a truly en-

chanting piece of work; the cornice and the angles of

the arches, being covered with the daintiest sculpture

of arabesques, flowers, fruit, medallions, cherubs, griffins,

all in the finest and most attenuated relief. It is like

the chasing of a bracelet in stone. The taste, the

fancy, the elegance, the refinement, are of those things

which revive our standard of the exquisite. Such

a piece of work is the purest flower of the French

Renaissance; there is nothing more delicate in all

Touraine.

There is another fine thing at Tours which is not

particularly delicate, but which makes a great impres-

sion, - the- very interesting old church of Saint Julian,

lurking in a crooked corner at the right of the Rue

Royale, near the point at which this indifferent thorough-

fare emerges, with its little cry of admiration, on the

bank of the Loire. Saint Julian stands to-day in a

kind of neglected hollow, where it is much shut in by

houses; but in the year 1225, when the edifice was

begun, the site was doubtless, as the architects say,

more eligible. At present, indeed, when once you have

caught a glimpse of the stout, serious Romanesque

tower, - which is not high, but strong, - you feel that

the building has something to say, and that you must

stop to listen to it. Within, it has a vast and splendid

nave, of immense height, - the nave of a cathedral, -

with a shallow choir and transepts, and some admir-

able old glass. I spent half an hour there one morn-

ing, listening to what the church had to say, in perfect

solitude. Not a worshipper entered, - not even an old

man with a broom. I have always thought there is a

sex in fine buildings; and Saint Julian, with its noble

nave, is of the gender of the name of its patron.

It was that same morning, I think, that I went in

search of the old houses of Tours; for the town con-

tains several goodly specimens of the domestic archi-

tecture of the past. The dwelling to which the average

Anglo-Saxon will most promptly direct his steps, and

the only one I have space to mention, is the so-called

Maison de Tristan l'Hermite, - a gentleman whom the

readers of "Quentin Durward" will not have forgotten,

- the hangman-in-ordinary to the great King Louis XI.

Unfortunately the house of Tristan is not the house of

Tristan at all; this illusion has been cruelly dispelled.

There are no illusions left, at all, in the good city of

Tours, with regard to Louis XI. His terrible castle of

Plessis, the picture of which sends a shiver through

the youthful reader of Scott, has been reduced to sub-

urban insignificance; and the residence of his _triste

compere,_ on the front of which a festooned rope figures

as a motive for decoration, is observed to have been

erected in the succeeding century. The Maison de

Tristan may be visited for itself, however, if not for

Walter Scott; it is an exceedingly picturesque old

facade, to which you pick your way through a narrow

and tortuous street, - a street terminating, a little be-

yond it, in the walk beside the river. An elegant

Gothic doorway is let into the rusty-red brick-work,

and strange little beasts crouch at the angles of the

windows, which are surmounted by a tall graduated

gable, pierced with a small orifice, where the large

surface of brick, lifted out of the shadow of the street,

looks yellow and faded. The whole thing is disfigured

and decayed; but it is a capital subject for a sketch

in colors. Only I must wish the sketcher better luck

- or a better temper - than my own. If he ring the

bell to be admitted to see the court, which I believe

is more sketchable still, let him have patience to wait

till the bell is answered. He can do the outside while

they are coming.

The Maison de Tristan, I say, may be visited for

itself; but I hardly know what the remnants of Plessis-

les-Tours may be visited for. To reach them you

wander through crooked suburban lanes, down the

course of the Loire, to a rough, undesirable, incon-

gruous spot, where a small, crude building of red

brick is pointed out to you by your cabman (if you

happen to drive) as the romantic abode of a super-

stitious king, and where a strong odor of pigsties and

other unclean things so prostrates you for the moment

that you have no energy to protest against the obvious

fiction. You enter a yard encumbered with rubbish

and a defiant dog, and an old woman emerges from a

shabby lodge and assures you that you are indeed in

an historic place. The red brick building, which looks

like a small factory, rises on the ruins of the favorite

residence of the dreadful Louis. It is now occupied

by a company of night-scavengers, whose huge carts

are drawn up in a row before it. I know not whether

this be what is called the irony of fate; at any rate,

the effect of it is to accentuate strongly the fact (and

through the most susceptible of our senses) that there

is no honor for the authors of great wrongs. The

dreadful Louis is reduced simply to an offence to the

nostrils. The old woman shows you a few fragments,

- several dark, damp, much-encumbered vaults, de-

nominated dungeons, and an old tower staircase,

in good condition. There are the outlines of the old

moat; there is also the outline of the old guard-room,

which is now a stable; and there are other vague out-

lines and inconsequent lumps, which I have forgotten.

You need all your imagination, and even then you

cannot make out that Plessis was a castle of large ex-

tent, though the old woman, as your eye wanders over

the neighboring _potagers,_ talks a good deal about the

gardens and the park. The place looks mean and

flat; and as you drive away you scarcely know whether

to be glad or sorry that all those bristling horrors have

been reduced to the commonplace.

A certain flatness of impression awaits you also, I

think, at Marmoutier, which is the other indisuensable

excursion in the near neighborhood of Tours. The

remains of this famous abbey lie on the other bank of

the stream, about a mile and a half from the town.

You follow the edge of the big brown river; of a fine

afternoon you will be glad to go further still. The

abbey has gone the way of most abbeys; but the place

is a restoration as well as a ruin, inasmuch as the

sisters of the Sacred Heart have erected a terribly

modern convent here. A large Gothic doorway, in a

high fragment of ancient wall, admits you to a garden-

like enclosure, of great extent, from which you are

further introduced into an extraordinarily tidy little

parlor, where two good nuns sit at work. One of these

came out with me, and showed me over the place, -

a very definite little woman, with pointed features, an

intensely distinct enunciation, and those pretty man-

ners which (for whatever other teachings it may be

responsible) the Catholic church so often instils into

its functionaries. I have never seen a woman who had

got her lesson better than this little trotting, murmur-

ing, edifying nun. The interest, of Marmoutier to-day

is not so much an interest of vision, so to speak, as an

interest of reflection, - that is, if you choose to reflect

(for instance) upon the wondrous legend of the seven

sleepers (you may see where they lie in a row), who

lived together - they were brothers and cousins - in

primitive piety, in the sanctuary constructed by the

blessed Saint Martin (emulous of his precursor, Saint

Gatianus), in the face of the hillside that overhung the

Loire, and who, twenty-five years after his death,

yielded up their seven souls at the same moment, and

enjoyed the curious privilege of retaining in their faces,

in spite of this process, the rosy tints of life. The

abbey of Marmoutier, which sprung from the grottos in

the cliff to which Saint Gatianus and Saint Martin re-

tired to pray, was therefore the creation of the latter

worthy, as the other great abbey, in the town proper,

was the monument of his repose. The cliff is still

there; and a winding staircase, in the latest taste, en-

ables you conveniently to explore its recesses. These

sacred niches are scooped out of the rock, and will

give you an impression if you cannot do without one.

You will feel them to be sufficiently venerable when

you learn that the particular pigeon-hole of Saint

Gatianus, the first Christian missionary to Gaul, dates

from the third century. They have been dealt with as

the Catholic church deals with most of such places to-

day; polished and furnished up; labelled and ticketed,

- _edited,_ with notes, in short, like an old book. The

process is a mistake, - the early editions had more

sanctity. The modern buildings (of the Sacred Heart),

on which you look down from these points of vantage,

are in the vulgar taste which seems doomed to stamp

itself on all new Catholic work; but there was never-

theless a great sweetness in the scene. The afternoon

was lovely, and it was flushing to a close. The large

garden stretched beneath us, blooming with fruit and

wine and succulent vegetables, and beyond it flowed

the shining river. The air was still, the shadows were

long, and the place, after all, was full of memories,

most of which might pass for virtuous. It certainly

was better than Plessis-les-Tours.