THE MOTHER ABBEY
It is time to turn from Cluny of the past to Cluny of the present. We
have not far to go; for the town is still the abbey, and will be so
yet, I hope, for many a year to come.
Early on the first morning of our stay, we left the little Hotel de
Bourgogne, which stands on the site of the nave, in the very shadow of
the last remaining gaunt tower of Cluny. The entrance to the alley is
through the façade of the ancient "Palace of the Pope Gélase," as it
is called, a fine, fourteenth-century building, restored--rebuilt one
might say--in 1783, and fronting on the old courtyard of the monastery,
now known as the Place de la Grenelle, or the Place du Marché, on the
opposite side of which is a building that was once the monastic stable.
The upper story of the façade has fine Gothic windows, forming almost
an arcade. The trefoiled tracery is satisfactory, and exquisitely
carved faces look down upon you from the corbels of the drip-stones. It
was to Cluny, during the abbacy of Pons, that Gélase II., ill-treated
and threatened by the partisans of Henry V., fled for rest and refuge;
and here, a few days afterwards, lying upon ashes, clothed in the robe
of the Benedictine order, and surrounded by his cardinals and the
monks of the community, says a contemporary, he died "as in his own
house."[90] This palais du pape Gélase is now the principal building
of the secondary school, the "Ecole nationale des Arts et Métiers,"
established in the precincts of the abbey. We wandered for an hour
about the building, endeavouring to fashion again, in our minds, Cluny
as it was.
Standing in that echoing transept, the sole relic of the great
Mother Church of Western Christendom, following the noble shafting
up to where, above the mutilated capitals, sculptured with all the
naive skill and courage of the time, the eye can reach the lofty
vault, and follow round the fluted pilasters of the triforium
arcades, I felt that, of all the thousand acts of Vandalism that the
incredible, immeasurable folly and ignorance of man have inflicted
upon a long-suffering world, this is the most insufferable, the most
unpardonable. I can understand, I can almost forgive, a Puritan
Cromwell, blinded by a fanaticism, that, though savage and ignorant,
was yet, in intention, religious, battering down the statues of Mary
from their niches, and shattering with fusilades the glass that, for
hundreds of years, had bathed in loveliest colours the sunlit aisles
of our Gothic cathedrals; but this I can neither understand nor
pardon--that those who, discarding all other religions, have bowed the
knee to Reason, as the most divine attribute of man, should have found,
in her name, a warrant to drive a street through the abbey's cloister
garth, and blast, with the dynamiter's bomb, the hoary arches of Cluny.
[Illustration: ·CLUNY·]
This chapel of the normal school, as it now is, was once the southern
limb of the great transept. With the tower of the Eau Bénite, the
smaller tower of the Horloge, and the Chapelle Bourbon, it is the sole
remaining relic of the church itself. Until after 1823, the transept
was open to the wind and rain, which threatened ruin to the fabric. It
was decided, therefore to close the gaping arches of the collateral
on the east and west, and to build a wall on the north side. The
immense height of the transept, emphasized by the vaulting shafts,
is made more striking by the small space within which it is viewed,
and the blind gallery and clerestory, with their arcades, and coupled,
engaged columns, and fluted pilasters, enable one to break through, in
imagination, that northern wall, and get a realistic glance, east and
west, into the sanctuary, and down the five aisles of the church as it
was.
The two chapels remaining in the transept, are those of St. Martial and
St. Stephen. The former, half domed and lighted by three windows, is
similar in style to the original apsidal chapels; that of St. Stephen
is fine Gothic work of the first half of the fourteenth century. Here
was buried Pierre de Chastelux, abbot from 1322 to 1343, who bought
the Palais des Thermes, at Paris, where Jean de Bourbon, a century
later, was to commence the Hotel de Cluny. Here, too, was buried, in
the middle of the chapel, Jacques d'Amboise (1480-1510), the successor
of Jean de Bourbon, and the completer of the Palais Abbatial, here at
Cluny, and of the Hotel de Cluny at Paris. The brickwork of the south
wall of the transept still shows the position of the two doors, one for
ordinary use, and one processional gateway, leading into the cloisters.
The most important remaining building is the Chapelle Bourbon, which
was added to the south end of the smaller (eastern) transept by Abbot
Jean de Bourbon (1456-1480), who had his own private oratory here,
whence he could assist, through an aperture in the wall, at the
ceremonies before the great altar in the sanctuary. Enough remains
of the decoration of the chapel to show, at a glance, that it was a
good example of late Gothic art. Around it were ranged, on a series
of sculptured corbels or consoles, the heads of fifteen prophets,
painted in colours. They are not lacking in expression, but are
clumsy and heavy. These busts served as supports for fifteen stone
statues, those of St. Paul, the Virgin Mary, John the Baptist, and the
twelve Apostles, all of which have disappeared, no one knows whither.
The guide told us that one of these statues, that of Christ, was
in gold, and all the others in silver; a statement which, if it be
true, accounts sufficiently for their disappearance. The only thing
of interest remaining in the grounds of the école normale is the
thirteenth-century bake-house, close to the Tour du Moulin, by the
river wall.
The ancient wall of the abbey is broken down in many places, and part
of it is engulfed by the buildings of the town erected against it. Of
the interior towers of the abbey--besides those of the church--only two
remain, the Tour du Moulin, and the Tour des Fromages. The first, as
we have just seen is close to the river, and the second is close to the
church of Notre Dame. The origin of its curious name is not known. Of
the exterior relics of the abbey, the most interesting, architecturally
and historically, is the great entrance gate, which is high up on the
side of the hill, at the top of the road leading from the Hotel de
Bourgogne, the street that extends along the site of the nave, the
narthex, the porch, and the parvis of the basilica. On your right,
as you mount the rise, you pass part of a gateway, to the crevices
of whose moulded stones cling rock plants and grasses--a beautiful,
time-mellowed ruin--all that remains of the gate of the narthex.
The great abbey gate is a dark and forbidding piece of masonry, in
the Roman manner, and evidently imitated from the gates of Autun. It
comprises two arches, each with fluted, engaged columns, whose richly
sculptured capitals support an ornamented archivolt. There were also
fluted pilasters supporting a cornice. The greater part of these has
disappeared, as has the attic colonnade, also imitated from the gates
of Autun, and similar to the colonnades which exist still in the
Romanesque houses of Cluny. The thickness of the pillars behind the
door, and the absence of windows in the adjoining wing of the Palais
Abbatial, point to the conclusion that the gate was fortified in the
late middle ages, probably by a quadrangular tower. Interesting as
this shattered old relic is architecturally, its charm lies in the
memories of the great ones to whom it opened. All those who made the
most glorious pages of the history of Cluny have passed beneath its
arches--Priests and Saints, as St. Hugues, Pierre Damien, Abélard,
and Anselm; great Popes, as Hildebrand (Gregory VII.), Gélase II.,
Innocent IV., Boniface VIII.; among Kings, William the Conqueror, Saint
Louis, Philippe le Bel, and his sons; Charles VI. and his uncles.
Some of these passed through in humble guise, but most came with
royal, or semi-royal pageantry, mounted on proud chargers, at the head
of glittering cavalcades, and followed by a long retinue of lords,
soldiers and attendants, to partake of the limitless hospitality of
Cluny.
On the north side of this famous gate, is the Palais Abbatial,
comprising two buildings, once joined, but separated at the time of
the Revolution, and now serving as the Musée and the Hotel de Ville.
That nearest to the gate was built, in the latter half of the fifteenth
century, by the famous abbot, Jean de Bourbon, who added the Chappelle
Bourbon to the basilica, and commenced the Hotel de Cluny at Paris.
[Illustration: THE ABBEY GATE ·CLUNY·]
He was, in effect, the first of the commendatory abbots, a system which
Julien de Baleure rightly calls "vraye sappe de l'état monastique
et ruine des bons monastères,"[91] since under it the rule and
revenues of the abbey passed into the hands of a stranger, who often
wholly neglected his charge, or, if he visited it at all, paid only
infrequent, ceremonial calls.
Jean de Bourbon, though Bishop of Puy when Charles VII. recommended him
to the choice of the monks of Cluny, was not a member of any monastic
order; nevertheless, while still remaining the "grand seigneur," he
appears to have done something to re-establish discipline in the
monastery. It soon became apparent to him that the frequent visits of
distinguished persons to his palace within the church precincts, were
a menace to the peace of the cloister. He accordingly bought land from
the monks, and built his palace adjoining the great gate, one arch of
which was reserved for his private entrance.
The building has undergone some modifications, but it remains a good
example of fifteenth-century work, especially the windows, which have
the typical flat arch of the period, and drip-stones with finely
sculptured heads for corbels. On the east side, a later age has
painted imitations of similar windows upon the stone wall. Within
the palace are some handsome staircases and doors, and two excellent
chimney-pieces, restored, showing the arms of Jean de Bourbon, of the
Bishopric of Puy, and of the Abbey and Town of Cluny. The arms of the
town are a silver key, on azure, with the ring below; those of the
abbey are two golden keys crossed by a sword with silver blade, the
hilt downwards.
The musée lapidaire on the ground floor is full of interesting relics.
They need not all be catalogued here, but I must point out two or
three of the best. Probably the oldest relic there is a triangular
memorial stone, in the corner, on the left of the fire-place, with the
epitaph of Aimard (Sanctus Aimardus), third abbot of Cluny, who died
in 964. Until 1872, this stone formed the threshold of a house in the
town. Another relic, not to be missed, is the pierre tombale of St.
Hugues (Abbot from 1046-1109), which is over the door opposite to the
entrance; there is also the urn that contained his heart.
[Illustration: HOTEL DE VILLE · CLUNY ·]
But the most interesting of all are some twelfth century capitals from
the ambulatory of St. Hugues' church. All of these, though showing the
naiveté of treatment characteristic of early Gothic art, are carved
with wonderful freedom, vigour, and sincerity. Figures, foliage, fruit,
and animals are all realistically produced, and grouped with a fine
sense of design and decorative effect. So strong are they, that the
Gothic capitals in the collection look weak beside them. The best of
them represents God driving a terrified Adam and Eve from the garden of
Eden. Eve is hiding behind Adam, who is draped in fig leaves. Another
shows the sacrifice of Abraham at the moment when he is interrupted
by the angel; another the creation of the world; and another has
figures of musicians, playing various instruments, sculptured from
elliptical medallions. More of these capitals would probably have been
preserved, had the church been demolished with less fracas; but the
revolutionaries chose the easier way, which was to blow it to pieces
with bombs; consequently the capitals, falling from so great a height,
were nearly all destroyed.
[Illustration: Ornament; Pascal Lamb; twelfth century]
Among other notable things is a frieze from a twelfth century house,
and a delicious cobbler's sign, of the same period, showing the man
hard at work at his bench, assisted by his wife holding a little pot in
both hands, while, beside them, a fiddler passes the time in harmony.
There is also a charming Pascal Lamb, endowed with a seeing eye and
a cloven fore-foot, which, turned upwards, balances a Greek cross.
Another remarkable stone is that known as the "Belle Pierre," so named
from the street in which it was found.[92] It represents two knights
tilting, and a bearded man riding upon a strange beast.
Upstairs is a picture gallery containing old views of the Abbey, and a
number of other things worth seeing, one of the most notable being a
wooden chest of the fifteenth century, banded with iron, in which were
kept the famous Rouleaux de Cluny, archives that disappeared during the
Revolution. No official catalogue is published, so far as I am aware;
but those who desire fuller information than I have given here, can
find it in M. Penjon's book.
The Hotel de Ville is the eastern-most building of the two forming
the Abbot's palace. It was built by Jacques d'Amboise, in the early
part of the seventeenth century, and, during the period of the Abbés
Commendataires, was the official residence of the grand prior. It
has been so much altered within as scarcely to be worth a visit,
but the exterior, though somewhat mutilated, retains much of its
original charm. At the west entrance is a beautiful little tower, in
transitional style, with a late Gothic arch, and cupids and foliage
sculptured on the spandrils and the tympanum.
The main eastern façade, though somewhat unusual, is of very effective
design. Its chief characteristics are two square projecting towers,
connected by a raised balcony, with a double staircase surmounted by
an ornamental, pierced parapet. The stone towers are decorated with
sculpture, in the form of flamboyant church-window tracery below, and
panels above, carved with arabesques, foliage, lilies, grotesques,
shell ornaments, etc., all in the purest and lightest style of that
early Renaissance work, which the discovery of Italy by Charles VIII.
had been the means of developing in France. The effect of the whole,
though rather conscious and artificial, is quite pleasing and graceful.
On the south wall is an inscription of Claude de Guise, 1586.
From the buttressed terraces of the public gardens, around the Hotel de
Ville, you get some fine views of Cluny and the Tour de l'Eau Bénite,
extending right away to the wooded hills beyond the valley of the
Grosne.
Close to the great gate of the Abbey, in the Rue d'Avril, a narrow
street leading upwards out of the Rue de la République, are a number
of those Romanesque houses of the eleventh and twelfth centuries, for
which Cluny is famous. Up to about sixty years ago, whole streets of
this little Burgundian town had remained for seven or eight centuries
almost unchanged, but the utilitarian and commercial spirit of the age
has made itself felt, even in this out of the way corner of Burgundy,
and, one by one, the Romanesque houses are disappearing. Two remain,
however, in the middle of the town; and, in addition to those in the
Rue d'Avril, there are two adjoining one another in the Rue de la
République, above the Hotel de Ville. Beside these is a house of the
fifteenth century. Indeed, it would be still possible, in this town, to
trace the evolution of domestic architecture, almost without a break,
from the twelfth century to the present time.
The Romanesque houses of Cluny follow, pretty closely, a general type.
The window arcades reveal at once the great influence of the abbey
church. The majority of these houses are what we call terrace-built;
and are entered from the street by a door which opens into the front
room, or shop, and leads up the staircase to the first floor. At the
back of the front room or shop was an open court yard, with a well
in one corner of it. Across the court yard a covered passage led to
a kitchen at the back. The upper floor was similar in design, with a
roofed gallery leading to a room above the kitchen. The first floor
front room was the bedroom of the tenant, his wife, and children; while
the servants and apprentices did as best they could in the attic above;
for the practice of rigidly separating the sexes did not come in until
the twelfth century. Each house showed a pleasing elevation, and was
erected with a solidity and elegance of design far excelling anything
seen in the same class of building to-day. The shop front was formed
by one great arch, without windows, but closed at night by a shutter,
which, dropped during the day, formed a counter for the exhibition of
the shopman's wares. Customers did not enter the shop, but transacted
their business across the counter, and no tradesman might call a
purchase from another shop until the latter had finished his business.
Different trades were kept together in particular streets--hence such
names as the Rue des Tanneurs, which still exists in Cluny. Above
the ground floor were two other stories, of which the upper one was
generally lighted by an arcade of round-headed arches, imitated from
the Abbey, with sculptured piers or colonnettes, surmounted by a carved
cornice or architrave, and protected by overhanging eaves.[93]
[Illustration: ROMANESQUE HOUSE·CLUNY·]
These charming houses were among the earliest examples of domestic
architecture in stone, and it is very interesting to notice that the
builders have made no attempt to adhere to the principles of wooden
construction; but have followed the right masters, the ecclesiastical
builders. One of the best of the old houses is that popularly known
as the Hotel des Monnaies, on the right as you go up the Rue d'Avril.
In this case the windows are square-headed, but the most interesting
characteristics are the projecting chimney, and the great arches,
revealing the extraordinary thickness of the walls, a feature which
lends some colour to the legend that this is the old mint of the Abbey.
I will not mention any more particular houses; only let me assure the
reader that he who walks the streets of Cluny remembering that the
older portions of it are built with the very stones of the ruined
abbey, will assuredly have his reward.
The churches of the town are not particularly interesting. St. Marcel,
a somewhat barrack-like building of the twelfth century, at the station
end of the town has a good Clunisian clock-tower. The building is
roofed with wood, because, having no buttresses, it would not stand the
thrust of vaulting. The église Notre Dame, in the centre of the town,
is more attractive; though its thirteenth-century façade is mutilated.
Birds rest upon the backs of the gargoyles, and upon the ends of the
broken shafting; and dirty children play, all day long, upon the
steps of the porch. The interior, however, has some good work in the
capitals, mouldings, and vaulting shafts of the nave. The engaged
vaulting shafts of the aisles are probably remains of an older church,
as they have squared plinths and clawed angles, transitional in style.
If anyone cares to see to what a plight the lost art of making stained
glass can come, let him look at the tympanum of the door of Notre Dame
de Cluny. The building adjoining the church has a Renaissance door, and
a thirteenth-century arcade on the upper floor.
There are two other houses, at least, in Cluny, to which, I suppose,
I should draw attention. The first of them is the Hotel Dieu, a
seventeenth-century building on the site of the old hospital of Cluny,
of which a few vestiges yet remain. Neither the architecture, nor
the kindred arts of that period, have ever aroused much enthusiasm in
me; consequently, I remember almost nothing of the fabric itself, and
my general impression is little more than a blaze of garden flowers,
tempered by delicious palm-leaves, and dotted here and there with pale
invalids, chatting in groups, or walking or sitting beside the flowers.
Within the entrance hall the frail voices of nuns earnestly intoning
prayers in unison awakened the religious spirit within me far more
effectively than had the deserted nave of Notre Dame, or of St. Marcel.
Their solemn chant and the austere cleanliness that reigned everywhere,
awed me so that I crept out on tip-toe into sunlight again, without
more than a glance at the famous Bouillon statues that I had come there
expressly to see.
The Cardinal de Bouillon, abbot of Cluny from 1683 to 1715, had
intended to erect, to the memory of his father and mother, at the
southern end of the small transept of the abbey church--opposite to the
Chappelle Bourbon--a monumental tomb that should be worthy of a family
and individual so illustrious as that brother of Turenne, who had faced
Richelieu, and played a leading part in the Fronde.
But the cardinal had reckoned without Louis XIV. That monarch, hearing
of the project, made further inquiries; and decided, as the report of
d'Aguerriau, which preceded the royal veto, put it, "That every part of
this design tended equally to preserve and immortalize, by the religion
of an ever-durable tomb, the too-ambitious pretensions of its author
towards the origin and grandeur of his house."
It was an ironical fate that chose such means for preserving the
statues, which were already on their way from Rome. Had the Roi Soleil
permitted the erection of the monument, not a vestige of it, probably,
would have survived the Revolution; consequently, its statues would
not, to-day, adorn the chapel of the Hotel Dieu at Cluny. The loss of
the mausoleum we need not regret; but the statues, though, to my mind,
too artificial and conscious to be pleasing, are carved with skill and
vivacity, and are generally considered to be among the best examples of
their kind. The bas-relief of the battle scene, on the plinth below the
male figure, is, to many, the most interesting part of the work.
On the way back to the town, on the right hand side, a lion, quite
Byzantine in character, and taken, I imagine, from the abbey church,
forms the sign of the café "Lion d'Or." In the lower part of the
town, in the Rue Prudhon, not far from the church of St. Marcel, is a
modest little dwelling, whereon the passer-by may read the name of the
greatest Burgundian painter, Prudhon, born there on April 4th, 1758.
The French Correggio, as he has been called, after the Italian master
who exercised most influence upon him, represents very faithfully,
in the quality of his art, some of the characteristics of the land
of its birth. On this more mountainous side of Burgundy, west of the
Côte d'Or, we should expect to find, in a modified form, along with
the typical Burgundian qualities of vivacity, strength, solidity,
and grace, some of the passion, the sterner qualities of the harder,
hill-bred race, more closely in touch with the sterner aspects of
nature--especially in the case of one whose birth synchronized with the
birth-throes of the great Revolution. It may be, too--and it appeals to
one's historic sense to believe--that something of the stern ethical
ideal of Cluny had passed into the mind of one who was born beneath
the shadow of the abbey towers. Many of those, however, to whom the
works of Prudhon are familiar, find greater pleasure in his lighter,
allegorical paintings, such as those in the Musée at Montpellier,
which, perhaps, show the influence of his predecessor Greuze, who, born
in Tournus, by the wide pastures of the Saône, represents the more
peaceful, pastoral, and lighter aspect of Burgundian art.
[Illustration: Ornament]
In connection with Prudhon, and with a parallel drawn between his
work and that of Greuze, M. Perrault-Dabot, in his book, "L'Art en
Bourgogne," and Montégut also, in his "Souvenirs," speak of a type of
feminine beauty at Cluny, which, I must confess, escaped my notice, as
it did also the not unobservant eyes of my wife.
"In the same way," says M. Perrault-Dabot, "the type of woman that one
still meets to-day, at Cluny, recalls to us the shadowy grace and the
warm suavity of Prudhon's talent. Cluny belongs to that region of our
province where the massy heads and highly-coloured complexions that
distinguish the mountain-dweller, disappear, to give place to subtler,
slighter forms, and to faces of an exquisite pallor. It is not that
perfect beauty in which every feature is regular; but it is beauty in
its most suave and touching form."
We were the more disappointed, because, though we had not expected to
find in Cluny any rivals to the classic beauties of Arles and St. Rémy,
we had come prepared for a welcome break in the monotonous plainness
of Burgundian humanity, a subject on which I shall have more to say
later on. Yet the types we met hereabouts, if not, on the whole,
attractive, were certainly not without the individuality that natural
vivacity imparts. My wife, sketching the great gate of the abbey, was
scandalized by the inordinate amount of child-smacking indulged in by
the mothers of the neighbourhood. I was not a witness on that occasion,
but I am inclined to think, that, in most cases, she failed to allow
for the excitability of a semi-southern temperament, and, could she
have read them, would have found more hardness in the hands than in the
hearts.
The little Hotel de Bourgogne, a white, straggling old building, snugly
placed beneath the protecting walls of the Tour de l'Eau Bénite,
added its quota to our amusement. The ways of the establishment were
refreshingly unconventional. For example, they rang neither bell nor
gong for dinner, but sent up two maids, who popped their tousled heads
simultaneously in at the bedroom door, and invited us to come down to
a meal, which, by the way, quite maintained the traditions of later
Clunisian luxe.
The company, too, was notable. We sat at the head of the table. On my
right was an individual whose cruel, yet suffering, face reminded me
of the executioner in Van der Weyden's great picture in the hospital
at Beaune. I gathered that the digestive organs were the seat of his
troubles; for he rejected, with a grunt, the normal fare, preferring
to dine on lightly-boiled eggs, whose liquid contents he imbibed by
a peculiar, sucking process, that was, in its way, a clever, though
noisy, gastronomic feat.
To us there entered an angelic newsboy, ragged yet smiling. He
distributed evening "Matins" all round the table, and departed,
as radiant as he had come. At the far end of the table, a
twentieth-century Mephistopheles, with the traditional lowering
brows and cunning smile, was transmitting improper stories to a
delighted Falstaffian neighbour; just as certain decadent fat abbots
of Cluny were wont to do, over a bottle of sparkling Meursault, in
those generous, degenerate days. The ample man on his left listened
covertly, and cleaned his mouth with his fingers, while the red wine,
poured in that nervous, spasmodic, Burgundian manner, gurgled from the
bottle neck into the bubbling, ruby lake below.
After dinner, came coffee and cigars, in the little café adjoining, of
which the floor is covered with sawdust, and the ceiling with flies.
Madame, a good-natured woman, dressed in flaming yellow satin, adorned
with much lace and passementerie, and possessing a very arch manner,
where the men were concerned, suggested to some of her intimates
that they should join her in a game of cards. Two of them at once
consented; but a third invité--an elephantine Burgundian voyageur de
commerce--ruminating over a petit verre in the corner, declined, on
the plausible pretext that he had "no small vices." Indeed, nothing
about him was small! For our part, we fell into agreeable conversation
with another habitué of the hotel, a gentleman also suffering from
the amplitude engendered by two six-course meals a day, washed down
with copious libations of red wine. He displayed a kindly interest in
my wife's sketches, and was particularly complimentary concerning one
reproduced in this book, representing a corpulent person--who might
well have been himself--sitting on a dangerously small chair before a
café table.
He had commenced to practise upon us his limited supply of English,
when our intercourse was interrupted, during the temporary absence of
Madame on domestic duties, by the advent, through the balcony leading
to the street, of a small pinched boy and girl, both in advanced
stages of tatters and dirt, who abruptly announced their intention of
entertaining us with a "petit chanson." Taking our silence for consent,
they stood, side by side, in the middle of the sanded floor, and,
lifting grimy faces to the fly-spotted ceiling, proceeded, with one
accord, to give vent to a series of extraordinarily discordant sounds,
which, to the universal relief, were interrupted by the reappearance of
Madame, who bustled into the room, and "shoved" the juvenile vocalists
out of it, barely giving them time to collect largesse during their
flight.
"Two young hooligans!" (apaches), she said severely, and, smoothing the
ruffled yellow satin, sat down again to enjoy her "small vice."
[Illustration: CAPITAL· ·CLUNY ABBEY·]
That night I dreamed a dream. I was back in the twelfth century, as a
brother, participating in a solemn mass in the great abbey of Cluny.
The sanctuary and the transepts of the mighty church were flooded in
the soft light, that, streaming from gold and jewelled candelabras,
flickered upon the bent forms of the dark-robed priests, and threw
into strong relief the flutings of the pilasters that adorned the huge
piers, and the strange birds and beasts that gazed from the foliage
of the capitals. Above us, the lines of the soaring vault were lost
in eternal shadows, and before us a thousand lights and jewels blazed
upon the High Altar, where Hugues himself, gloriously arrayed in cope
and mitre, was kneeling before the holy rood. The solemn chanting of
the mass sobbed and echoed down the lofty nave, across the shadowy
aisles, and up to where, upon the eastern dome, the Eternal Father
Himself, cloud-borne, among the symbols of His creation, lifted the
Right Hand in blessing, and laid His Left Hand upon the Book sealed
with seven seals. Suddenly, while our souls were pouring themselves
out in rapt adoration, a fearful detonation resounded above our heads.
Startled, terrified, we looked up. As we did so, while yet the echoes
of the shock were rolling through the upper darkness, a series of
crackling explosions shook the whole fabric to its foundations. The
floor heaved, the vaulting above our heads cracked from side to side,
the huge pillars trembled and tottered. Then an awful cry of alarm was
stilled into the louder silence of horror, as the whole mighty building
swayed, and towers, columns, vaults, and capitals collapsed, and, with
an appalling crash and a roar like the fall of many waters, buried all
in universal ruin.... I awoke--to find myself yet alive, in the prosaic
twentieth century, while from the house opposite proceeded uproarious
sounds of revelry by night, carried on with that sustained exuberance
which the Latin races alone can impart to their festivals. It was not
Cluny that was falling again, but furniture, glasses and crockery. Then
it all came back to me--the tale I had heard of the impending marriage
of Yvonne. They were worthily celebrating the occasion. Blessings upon
her! I rose and leaned out of the casement. Two or three songs were
being sung, simultaneously, to the accompaniment of a running chorus of
applause, and an obbligato with the chairs of the salon.
Until the orgy was at an end, I lay awake, meditating upon my dream,
and finding, to my sorrow, a real historical analogy between that tipsy
revel and the ever-to-be-regretted fall of the stones of Cluny.
* * * * *
The next morning, I started on my bicycle for Berzé-le Chatel, a
castle about twelve miles from Cluny, on the road to Mâcon. On the
steps of the hotel I was accosted affably, in the English tongue, by
a gentleman, whose face was quite unfamiliar to me. He assured me,
however, that he had met us at Bourg en Bresse; and I, being unable
either to deny or to affirm the assertion, must needs listen. Having
finished with the weather, he paused, turned, waved his hand towards
the gray abbey tower, that rose above our heads, and said majestically,
with an air of imparting valuable information; "C'est ancien." Being
still heavy for want of sleep, I just cursed him inwardly, and went my
ways.
As you mount the road that winds upwards towards Berzé, there opens out
a most lovely view over the green valley of the Grosne, whose windings
are marked by tall poplars, through which shine the distant towers and
hills of Cluny. Then come four or five kilometres of typical Burgundian
climbing, before you gain the crest of the ridge, and find yourself
looking down, and away for mile after mile, until, between a succession
of rugged hills, that lie like prehistoric monsters couchant towards
the southern sun, among golden vineyards dotted with ancient villages
and immemorial walls, the serpenting, poplar-fringed stream is lost
to sight, where at last, far off, in the blue distance, the valley
merges into the great plain of the Saône. To the left, on a spur of the
hill, guarding proudly the hamlet that shelters at its base, rise the
time-bronzed towers of the great castle of Berzé.
The Castle of Berzé, now the residence of the Comte de Milly, became
one of the defensive fortresses of the Abbey and town of Cluny,
according to the treaty of 1250, which, through the intervention of
Blanche de Castille, set forth the respective powers, and adjusted
the somewhat strained relations of the lords of Berzé and the Abbots
of Cluny. It gave to the Seigneurs of Berzé-le Chatel, the right to
administer justice over the abbatial lords in the neighbourhood of the
castle, including Berzé-la Ville. Moreover, it bound the tenants of
these lands to come together "at the clamour of the castle," to defend
and guard it, in return for which assistance, they were granted, in war
time, the right of shelter within the fortress, both for themselves and
their goods. From that time forward, the Abbots and Seigneurs were on
such good terms, that some of the latter subscribed liberally to the
Abbey, and even obtained the privilege of burial within its precincts.
[Illustration: ·CHATEAU DE BERZÉ·]
In legend, as well as in history, Berzé has played its part. A Seigneur
of the castle, it is said, piqued by a morbid curiosity, shut up in
the lowest donjon an ox and a man, that he might know which would
die first. Tradition avers that his passion for knowledge remained
unsatisfied, since both died together. In 1315, Geoffrey de Berzé,
tiring of his diurnal occupations, namely, hunting in the morning and
beating his servants at night, raised an impious hand against, and let
it descend upon, the archdeacon of Mâcon, who, through the chapter,
brought a complaint before parliament; with the result that Geoffrey
and his successors were condemned, in perpetuity, to burn, every year,
a candle of fifty pounds weight in the choir of the cathedral of Mâcon.
This fine was still being paid, up to the close of the eighteenth
century, when it was customary to set forth in bad verses, on a card
at the foot of the chandelier that carried the candle, an explanation
of this "amende honorable."
Berzé-le Chatel was prominent, too, in those bloody wars of the
Armagnacs and Bourguignons, which, for more than thirty years, drenched
the stricken land of France in the blood of her bravest men. Later
on, it fell into the hands of the Dauphin, afterwards Charles VII.,
who, by magnificent promises, succeeded in inducing the governor to
betray the Duke of Burgundy. It did not remain long in the hands of
the French; for local knowledge of the subterranean passages soon
effected its recapture by the Burgundians, who, to the terror of the
French soldiers, seemed to have arisen mysteriously from the earth. The
last siege of the castle took place in 1591, when the Duc de Namours
after making a breach in the walls with artillery, captured it for the
Huguenots, whose attacks it had resisted hitherto.[94]
A path leads off the road, down through the vines, and up to the
cottages at the castle foot, where you can climb, by another steep
stony way, to the great, double-towered gate, guarded by machicolations
and portcullis, and bearing the coat-of-arms of the house of Berzé.
Within is a lawn, encircling a little pond, and an ivied avenue of
ancient firs, whose sombre hues set off, in summer, the vivid scarlet
of the geraniums, and the soft tints of the laburnum. Crossing this
grassy, stoutly-walled terrace, you pass beneath another fortified
gate, where scarlet creepers cling, to the court yard of the castle,
bright with beds of fuschias, and masses of ball-shaped white flowers.
Shade is given by a great walnut-tree; and here, too, is an adjunct,
indispensable now, as in mediæval times,--a well. The façade of the
house shows, upon its soft, gray stone, the typical cupid's bow windows
of the fifteenth century. Across the dwarf wall, the view extends away,
eastward, over a lower terrace, to the trimly-kept kitchen gardens,
and ancient out-buildings; westward to the vine-clad hills. This is a
castle of enchantment, in whose flowery courts one can recall visions
of the purple past that has floated over the towers of Berzé.
Leaving the castle, and passing down the great double avenue of walnuts
and sycamores which connect it with the romanesque church of the
Village of Berzé, I stood, looking at the curious staircase that leads,
between roofed-in buttresses, to the church tower. An old woman passed
me, carrying, by a yoke on her shoulders, two large buckets of water.
"Whose castle is this, Madame?"
"This is Monsieur le Comte de Milly's, monsieur," and she bowed
slightly; whether to me or to the great name, I do not know. Two jets
of water splashed over her sabots.
We went our ways; she looking down at her wet feet, and I thinking
of the Marquis of Carabas--not by reason of any legendary connection
between that potentate and the château of Berzé, but because the turn
of her phrase had recalled my first reading of "Puss in Boots."
* * * * *
[Illustration: CHATEAU DE LOURDON]
Another of the guardian castles of Cluny, that to which in dangerous
times the treasures, charts, and title deeds of the Abbey were taken,
was the Château de Lourdon. It was pillaged in 1575 by the partisans
of the Duc d'Alençon, who burned so many of the original papers that
Claude de Guise, after his reconciliation with Henry IV., obtained
letters patent rendering valid the existing copies of the parchments.
In 1632, Richelieu, who had obtained possession of the Abbey of Cluny,
ordered the demolition of the donjon and castle of Lourdon, a command
so faithfully carried out that nothing was left of the fortress, except
what is to be seen to-day--a ruined ivy-hung wall, its line broken by
a round tower, through whose windows you can see the concierge moving,
and by a curious row of great columns, like organ pipes, now generally
supposed to be the remains of a kind of mediæval tennis court. From the
castle rising high above the bush-covered rocks, you can look down over
the grape vines to the village of Lourdon, and the hills of the Grosne
valley. Looking up at it, through the houses of the village street, it
must have appeared a not unworthy guardian of a trust so great as were
the treasures of Cluny.
The best way to get there by the valley road from Cluny, is to turn up
the hill when you come to a small sentinel tower. If you ask the way,
you will probably be told, as we were, to turn at the next lane, which
is longer, less convenient, and gives a much less striking approach
to the castle. Persistent mis-direction of strangers is a common
Burgundian failing.
* * * * *
Those who have wandered about the streets of Cluny may have happened
upon the late fifteenth century, or early sixteenth century, house of
the Prat family, the ancestors of the poet Lamartine, whose name is
frequently heard by travellers in the Mâconnais or the Dauphiné; though
the nation as a whole, soon forgot him, after that swiftly rising wave
of latin enthusiasm had swept him into the seats of the mighty, and,
receding, had dragged him with it, to face, as best he might, the
obscure, penniless life of a literary hack.
His birthplace, at Milly, is not now in existence; but the prospect
of seeing the family Château de Saint Point, where part of his youth,
and some later years of retirement, were passed, tempted me to pay a
visit to that valley. In a very improbable, though naturally written
and pathetic study of rustic life, "Le Tailleur de Pierres de St.
Point"--he who died of that, unhappily, rare malady, the love of
God--we have Lamartine's own description of his home.
From the mountain side projects a low hill "dominated at its summit
by an old castle flanked by compact towers, and by the notched spire
of a romanesque church tower. At the foot of the hill are pastures
bordered with alders, cherry and large nut trees, between whose trunks
can be seen the walls, roofs and rustic bridge of a hamlet built in
the shadow of the castle and comprising fifteen or twenty cottages of
workmen, small farmers or shopkeepers, all grouped around the village
church. These old towers, undermined at their bases by the weather,
and cracked by the weight of stone above them, shorn of the spires
at their summits, are useless to-day, except to flank a heavy square
mass of naked stone, pierced with a winding stair and several vaulted
rooms--such is my abode.... Thence the view, falling and rising,
extends over the most beautiful part of the valley of St. Point. One's
glance, following the rapid slope of the pastures, rests upon a field
through the middle of which runs the river 'Vallonge.' Great nut trees
with bronze foliage, motionless as metal leaves, poplars with trunks
storm-twisted, and with foliage more hairy and whiter than the head of
an old man, European cypresses, alders, birches, willows rescued by me,
twenty-five years ago now, from the bill of the tree-trimmer, leaning
from bank to bank of the river they love and are loved by, interwoven
over its course, form a lofty, floating, capricious vault of foliage of
every tint, a very mosaic of vegetation. The lightest airs of summer
sway this moving curtain, and summon thence waves of sound, breathings,
the watery sheen of leaves, flights of birds and vegetable scents,
which gladden the eyes, vary the outlook, and rise in sweet sounds and
wandering fragrances to the balcony of my house."
This balcony was the construction in sculptured stone, in imitation
of the old Gothic Balustrades of Oxford, that he had added to the
principal façade. Here the peacocks perching, day and night, bordered
its heavy stones with a row of living caryatides, as they spread their
brilliant tails to the sun.[95]
Meanwhile, with such passages as these in my mind, I was making for
the village. Having climbed the winding staircase that leads up to
the terraced churchyard, I saw, as I drew near, across the tangled
graves, the tomb of Lamartine, a pretentious, but quite unsuccessful,
production, in bastard gothic style, the interior hung round with
horrible wreaths of artificial flowers. On a pedestal was a bust of the
poet, with a metal urn on each side, and, below, a recumbent statue of
his wife, and memorials of other descendants.
It was with a feeling of intense relief that I turned from the
artificial to the real, to the monument in which nature's art, that is
not artifice, has immortalized the memory of Lamartine.
Here is the primitive little romanesque church, whose gracious tower
is now hoary with years, and golden with the kisses of the sun.
One's glance rests long upon those stones, where, above the slender
colonettes, among the waving grasses, wild flowers, ferns, and soft
moss of the slag roof, the stone corner-heads of a thousand years ago
watch silently over a tree-embowered, weed-entangled, dreamy garden
of the dead. For these are the living memorials of a poet--the wide,
green meadow of the valley, the undulating boughs, and gray and silver
glimpses of the breeze-swung poplars, the red tiles of the ancient
village, the stream willow-fringed, the creamy cattle browsing in
upland pastures, the gracious contours of woodland hill, touched by
Autumn's mellowing hand, the blue dome above, whose silver islands
float on the wings of a warm, south wind.
His memories linger, too, in melodious songs, sung by poets not less
than he, the lark in the blue, the thrush on the bough, the zephyrs
among the leaves; the distant tap, tap, tap, of the woodpecker in
the far-off forest, or of some follower of that stone-cutter of St.
Point, with whom Lamartine, high up in the mountain quarry, talked of
the ways of God with man. One day, perhaps, France will realize these
truths; then she will cease to desecrate, with hideous monuments, the
open spaces of her ancient villages, and the resting place of her
illustrious dead.
Having been assured by a villager that visits to the Château were
permitted, encouraged even, I effected an entrance to the grounds,
through a gate in the wall on the north side of the church. The
building appears to be a patchwork of many dates, marred by some
wretched, modern imitations, and the hideous device, not infrequent
hereabouts, of painting sham gothic windows on a plaster wall; but the
general effect of the whole, matured by age, set in finely timbered
grounds, is not unpleasing. I wish I could say the same for my welcome,
which might be summed up in these words: "Come in, go through; damn
you, get out!"
The cicerone who, by the way, was kind enough to inform me that no part
of the building was of earlier date than the nineteenth century,[96]
was so rude that I felt much more disposed to discuss with her, gently
but firmly, the question of manners, than to look at the many relics
she was able to show me.[97]
It is obvious that only three courses are open to the owner of an
historic house. He can refuse admission to the public; he can grant
admission unconditionally; or he can grant admission on payment, or on
other reasonable conditions; but, upon whatever terms he admits you,
he must make you welcome, so long as you, in your turn, conform to the
exigencies of polite society. A thinly veiled attitude of hostility
deprives the self-respecting visitor of all pleasure.
Be it added, however, lest I should discourage others from visiting
the castle, that the account of my experience was received most
apologetically by several villagers, who assured me that the present
inhabitants were "gentils," and that my cold reception must have been
due to the fact, of which I was, of course, unaware, that there was
illness in the house.
My wrath having been appeased by lunch, and the attentions of a
good-natured hostess, I proceeded boldly to climb to the head of the
Valley of St. Point, and, after many kilometres of very hard work,
was rewarded by a look back over the Valley, from below Tramaye. In
the middle distance, shone, in the afternoon sun, bronze and white
among the tapering poplars, the Village of St. Point, crowned by the
ancient gray church; and, higher yet, the sombre trees of the garden,
and the towers of Lamartine's château. Above Tramaye, itself a very
eagle's aerie, one by one the lower valleys open out to view, until, at
last, crossing the "col," you descend, for kilometre after kilometre,
to Clermain in the Valley of the Grosne, one of the once-fortified
advance-guard villages protecting the approach to Cluny from the South.
[Illustration: End of chapter VI; House of Lamartine]
FOOTNOTES:
[90] Lorain, p. 95.
[91] "Undermining of the monastic state and ruin of good
monasteries."--Penjon's "Cluny," p. 125.
[92] It was found in the façade of a barn, but once formed part of the
arch of a Romanesque house.
[93] For further particulars see the article on "Maisons" in
Viollet-le-Duc's "Dictionnaire Raisonné," Tome vi., p. 222 and on.
Also the chapter "Maisons Particuliéres" in M. Penjon's book.
[94] "Cluny, la Ville et l'Abbaye," par A. Penjon, pp. 4-5.
[95] "Le Tailleur de Pierre de St. Point," cap. vii., viii.
[96] In the sixteenth century the castle was occupied by Guillaume de
St. Point, Governor of Mâcon, a bitter enemy of the Calvinists.
[97] You are shown the bed on which he died, many interesting
photographs, articles of wearing apparel, and other personal relics
of Lamartine, also many paintings by Mme. Lamartine, an English
lady. There are others in the church.
[Illustration: Chapter VII heading; St. Bernard]