several churches. He went to some which were Catholic, and everywhere
he found the service very well done. Six of the churches are Lutheran
and are served by sixteen ministers, two of these churches being taken
from the Catholics, and four built by the Lutherans themselves. One
of the last-named he visited in the morning, and found it like the
great hall of a college, with neither images nor organs nor cross,
but with the walls covered with inscriptions in German taken from the
Bible. There were two chairs, one for the minister or for whomsoever
might preach, and another one placed lower for the leader in singing
the psalms. At every verse the people wait for the leader aforesaid,
who gives the note. They sing in haphazard fashion, each one according
to his humour, and with head bare or covered. After the singing, a
minister who had been in the assembly went to the altar, and read
from a book several prayers, at certain of which the people stood up
and clasped their hands, and made deep reverence at the name of Jesus
Christ. After he had finished his reading to the assembly, he put
before him on the altar a napkin, a basin, and a saucer, in which was
water. A woman, followed by a dozen others, brought to him a child,
swaddled and with face bare, whereupon the minister thrice took the
water in the saucer and sprinkled it on the child’s face and said
certain words. This being finished, two men approached and each one of
them placed two fingers of the right hand upon the child; the minister
then addressed them, and this was all.
M. de Montaigne held a conversation with this minister after he left
the church, and was informed that the ministers receive no stipend from
the church, their salary being paid by the Senate as a public charge;
that there was a greater crowd of worshippers in this one church than
in two or three of the Catholic churches together. We did not see a
single handsome woman. The women wear a vast variety of attire, and in
the case of the men it is a hard matter to say who is noble and who is
not, forasmuch as all sorts of men wear bonnets of velvet and carry
swords by the side. We had our lodging at the sign of the “Linde,”
called after a tree of the country, which stands adjoining the palace
of the Foulcres.[72] A certain member of this family, who died some
years ago, left a sum of two millions of French crowns to his heirs,
and these heirs made over to the Jesuits of the city thirty thousand
florins for prayers for the soul of the deceased, with which sum the
Jesuits are very handsomely equipped and provided. This house of the
Foulcres is roofed with copper: as a rule the houses are much finer,
larger, and higher than in any French town, and the streets much wider.
M. de Montaigne estimated the population of Augsburg to equal that of
Orléans.
After dinner we went to see a show of fencing in the public hall, where
there was a vast crowd. We had to pay for entrance as to a puppet
show, and for our seats in addition. They showed us some play with
the poignard, with the two-handed sword, with the quarter-staff, and
with the hanger. Afterwards we saw them shooting for a prize with bow
and crossbow, on a ground far finer than that of Schaffhausen. Beyond
this place, at the city gate by which we had entered, we observed a
copious stream of water which was brought into the city from outside
and led under the bridge used for traffic. It is conveyed by a wooden
aqueduct built below the bridge aforesaid, and is thus carried over the
stream which forms the city ditch. This current in its course turns a
number of water-wheels attached to pumps which, by means of two leaden
pipes, raise the water of a spring, which rises in a hollow, to the
top of a tower some fifty feet in height. On the top of this tower the
water is poured into a great stone cistern, and from this cistern it
runs down through divers pipes and is distributed all over the city,
which in consequence is abundantly supplied with fountains. Private
persons, if it be their wish, may have a right of water for their own
use on payment of an annual rent of ten florins to the city, or for two
hundred florins paid down. The city was enriched by this magnificent
work about forty years ago.[73]
Marriages of Catholics with Lutherans are common, and the one most
keenly set on marriage commonly conforms to the faith of the other.
There are thousands of marriages of this sort. Our host was a Catholic
and his wife a Lutheran. Here they clean the glasses with a hairbrush
fixed to the end of a stick. According to report, excellent houses may
be bought for forty or fifty crowns apiece. The city guard did M. de
Montaigne and M. d’Estissac the honour of presenting to them fourteen
large vessels of wine for supper. This was brought by seven sergeants
clad in uniform and an officer of worship, whom our gentlemen invited
to sup, as is the custom in such cases. Something, moreover, is always
given to the bearers of the offering, and the sergeants aforesaid got a
crown. The officer who remained to supper told M. de Montaigne that the
city maintained three officials whose duty it was to greet strangers
of quality who came to visit the place, and that on this account they
always took care to ascertain the quality of each visitor, so that he
might receive the honours due to him. Moreover, they offered more wine
to some than to others. If a duke should arrive in the city, one of the
burgomasters would attend to bid him welcome. Us they took for barons
and knights. For certain reasons M. de Montaigne was inclined to assume
this counterfeit dignity, and to keep silence as to our real quality.
He spent the whole of the day walking through the town by himself, and
was convinced that he was treated with greater consideration on account
of the aforesaid subterfuge. A like honour indeed was paid by all the
German towns.
As he was passing through the church of Notre Dame on a very cold
day (for, after having enjoyed the finest weather possible up to our
departure from Kempten, we had of late been sharply pricked by the
cold), he carried, without thinking thereof, his handkerchief at his
nose, deeming that, being alone and plainly dressed, no one would
remark him; but after he had become more familiar with certain of
the citizens, they told him that the church officers had found his
carriage on the morning aforesaid very strange. Thus he committed the
fault he was ever most studious to avoid, to wit, that he had made
himself conspicuous by a trick alien to the taste of those who remarked
the same; for, as far as in him lay, he always conformed and brought
himself in line with the manners of whatever place he might frequent;
indeed, while he was in Augsburg he always wore a fur cap when he went
about the town. Augsburg, they say, is free from the mice and large
rats with which the rest of Germany is infested, and they tell many
wonderful stories thereanent, attributing this immunity to one of their
bishops who is buried there, and affirming that the earth from his
tomb, which is sold in little portions the bigness of a nut, will drive
away the vermin aforesaid from any place to which it may be taken.[74]
On the Monday we repaired to the church of Notre Dame to witness the
marriage of a rich young lady of the city--albeit ill-favoured--to a
certain Venetian, a factor in the house of the Foulcres. Amongst the
guests there was not one good-looking woman. This family is a very
numerous one; they are all very rich, and hold the highest position
in this city. We visited two apartments in their house, one high, of
grand measurement, and paved with marble, and the other low-ceilinged,
enriched with medals, both ancient and modern, and having a small
room at the end. These are the most sumptuous rooms I ever beheld.
At the gathering after the wedding we saw some dancing, and they
danced nothing but _Alemandes_. They constantly stop dancing and
lead the ladies back to their seats, which are ranged in double rows
against the walls and covered with red cloth; but the gentlemen do
not sit there with them. After a slight pause they take their dames
out again, kissing their hands, which salutation the ladies accept
without returning it; and then, having placed the arm under the ladies’
armpits, they embrace them, and the ladies put their right hands on the
gentlemen’s shoulders. They dance and chat together with heads bare and
in sober attire.
We saw more houses belonging to the Foulcres in other parts of the
city, which is beholden to this family for the great outlay of money
they spend in its adornment. These houses are summer residences. In
one we saw a clock which was worked by the flow of water which serves
as a counterpoise. At the same place were two large covered fish-ponds
full of fish, and twenty paces square. Round the brink of each of
the ponds are divers small pipes, some straight and others curving
upwards, and through each of these water is poured in very pleasant
wise into the pond, some delivering it in a direct jet, and others
spouting it upwards to the height of a pikestaff. Between the ponds is
a space some ten paces in width floored with planks, and between these
planks are hidden certain little taps of brass. Thus, at any time when
ladies may go to divert themselves by seeing the fish play about the
pond, it needs only the letting go a certain spring to make every tap
aforesaid send a jet of water straight upward to the height of a man,
and drench the petticoats and cool the thighs of the ladies. In another
place there is a fountain pipe, contrived to play a merry jest upon the
spectator, for, while you look at the same, any one who is so minded
may turn on the water in tiny hidden jets, which will throw in your
face a hundred little threads of water; and there is set up a Latin
inscription: _Quæsisti nugas, nugis gaudeto repertis_. Near thereto is
a large cage, twenty paces square and twelve or fifteen feet high,
which is enclosed all round with copper wire, well knit and fastened,
and inside are ten or twelve fir trees and a fountain. This cage is
full of birds, amongst others Polish pigeons, which they call _D’inde_,
and which I have seen elsewhere: these are large birds beaked like
partridges.
We saw also the handiwork of a certain gardener who, foreseeing
cold, inclement weather, had transported into a little shed a great
quantity of artichokes, cabbages, lettuces, spinach, chicory, and other
vegetables, which he had gathered as if to consume them at once, but in
lieu thereof had set them by the root in soil, and hoped to keep them
good and fresh three or four months; and indeed he had there a hundred
artichokes, not the least withered, though they had been plucked more
than six weeks. We saw also an instrument of lead bent and open at
either end. If any one should fill this with water and, keeping both
ends upwards, reverse it dexterously, so that one end shall suck up
from a vessel filled with water, while the other shall discharge
outside, they say that if the stream be once set going, the water will
continuously rush into the tube and discharge itself at the other end,
so as not to produce a vacuum in the tube.
The escutcheon of the Foulcres is a shield divided in the midst; on
the left a _fleur de lys_ of azure on a golden ground; on the right
a _fleur de lys_ of gold on an azure ground. These arms the Emperor
Charles V. granted when he ennobled them. We went to see certain men
who were conveying from Venice two ostriches to the Duke of Saxony. The
male was the blacker of the two, and had a red neck; the female was
of a grey colour and laid a great number of eggs. The men said that
these beasts felt less fatigue than they themselves, and constantly
contrived to escape, but they kept them in hand by means of a band
which girt them round the back above the thighs, and another one above
the shoulders. These bands held them in all round, and the guards had
caused to be fastened thereto long reins, by means of which they could
stop them, and make them turn as they desired. On the Tuesday the chief
men of the city showed us with great courtesy a postern gate, through
which all who wish may enter the city at any hour of the night, whether
on horse or on foot, by simply giving his name, and the name of the
citizen to whom he is going, or the name of the hostelry he purposes to
visit. Two trusty men, paid by the city, keep guard, and horsemen on
entering pay two batzen, and footmen one. The gate opposite to this one
in the outer wall is covered with iron, and beside it, attached to a
chain, is a handle, also of iron, which, being pulled, moves the chain
and strikes a bell in the bedchamber of one of the porters in a high
tower. The porter, though undressed and in bed, by means of machinery
which he moves backwards and forwards can open the door aforesaid,
albeit it is a hundred paces distant from his chamber. The incomer will
find himself on a bridge, some forty paces long, covered throughout,
which stretches over the city ditch. Along this bridge is a wooden
casing, within which works the machinery devised to open the outside
door, which is quickly closed behind the incomer. The bridge being
passed, the next place is a small enclosure; and here a stranger will
have to speak to the porter aforesaid and give his name and address.
Then the porter with a bell gives notice to his mate, who is lodged on
a lower floor of the gate tower, which contains many apartments; and
this porter, by working a spring in a gallery adjacent to his chamber,
opens, in the first instance, a little iron gate; and next, by means
of a great wheel, raises the drawbridge in such quiet fashion that no
one can detect any movement (for everything works by means of weights
on the walls and on the doors), and straightway everything closes again
with a great clatter. Beyond the bridge a great door, very thick, opens
by itself: this is of wood and strengthened by large sheets of iron.
The stranger now finds himself in a hall, and in all his passage
he meets no one with whom he may speak. When he is shut up in this
apartment another door, similar to the aforesaid, is opened for him,
and he can enter a second hall, lighted, where he will find a brazen
vessel, suspended by a chain, into which he casts the coin due for
his entry, and this the porter hoists up to his chamber. If he is not
content therewith he lets the stranger bide below till morning; but, if
he be satisfied, he opens by similar means another great door, which
closes immediately it has been passed by the stranger, who then finds
himself in the town.[75] This is one of the most carefully wrought
devices to be found anywhere, and the Queen of England sent thither a
special ambassador to inquire of the city authority how it was worked,
but the explanation of the secret was refused to her. Underneath this
gateway there is a vast vault, in which can be stabled under cover
five hundred horses, to be maintained and to be used in war without the
knowledge or consent of the town council.
After our visit to this place we went to see the church of Sainte
Croix, which is very beautiful. There at certain seasons they have a
great ceremony on account of a miracle which came to pass some hundred
years ago. It chanced that a woman instead of swallowing the body of
our Lord, took the same from her mouth and put it, wrapped in wax, into
a box. She confessed what she had done, and afterwards found what she
had placed in the box had changed into real flesh. They bring forward
divers testimonies to confirm the above statement, written both in
Latin and German, in divers parts of the church. They exhibit this bit
of wax enclosed in a crystal case and a little scrap of something red
like flesh. This church, like the house of the Foulcres, is covered
with copper, a thing not uncommon in these parts. The Lutheran church
is built adjoining thereto, this religion being housed and established
here, as in certain other places, almost in the cloisters of the
Catholic churches. In the churchyard of this church they have set up
the image of our Lady holding Christ in her arms, together with images
of saints and infants, and this inscription: _Sinite parvulos venire
ad me_, &c. In our lodging there was a machine made of iron fixed so
as to reach down to the bottom of a very deep well. Then up above a
servant, by working a handle which moves the machinery up and down
within a space of three or four feet, produces a pressure on the water
at the bottom of the well, and propels it by the pistons of the machine
aforesaid, so that it is forced to ascend by a leaden pipe, which takes
it to the kitchens and whithersoever else it may be needed. They have a
paid cleaner who puts in order immediately any befoulment of the walls.
At table we were offered pasties, large and small, made in earthen
dishes, of form and colour exactly resembling that of a pasty crust;
and it is very rare to sit down to a meal without sweetmeats or boxes
of confectionery. The bread is the best to be had anywhere, and the
wines good. In this country the wine is, for the most part, white,
and what we drank was not grown near Augsburg, but five or six days’
journey distant. For every hundred florins which an innkeeper lays out
in wine, the city government takes sixty as a tax, and half this amount
is demanded of a private person who only buys for his own consumption.
In many places they still retain the custom of putting perfumes in the
bed-chambers and in the stoves.
Some time ago the town was entirely Zwinglian. But since the Catholics
have been recalled,[76] those of the reformed faith take the second
place, and at this time, though they are greatly superior in number to
the Catholics, they are ousted from all authority. M. de Montaigne also
paid a visit to the Jesuits, whom he found to be men of much learning.
On the morning of Wednesday, October 19, we took our breakfast, and
M. de Montaigne was much grieved to depart and leave unvisited the
Danube and the town of Ulm which it passes, seeing that he was only one
day’s journey distant. He also desired to go to a bath some half-day’s
journey farther on called Sourbronne,[77] which is in a level country,
and has a spring of cold water, good both for drinking and for the bath
when duly warmed. It has, moreover, a pleasant relish on the palate
which makes it agreeable to drink, and it is excellent for distempers
of the head and stomach. The bath is in great repute, and visitors can
be most sumptuously housed there in fine apartments, the same as at
Baden, according to what we were told thereanent; but the season of
winter was now approaching, and this place lay in a direction opposite
to that in which we were bound, wherefore it would have been necessary
for us to retrace our steps to Augsburg, and M. de Montaigne was
greatly averse from traversing the same road twice. I left a shield
with the arms of M. de Montaigne in front of the door of the room he
had occupied, marvellously well painted, at a cost of two crowns to the
painter and twenty sous to the joiner. The town is on the banks of the
river Lech, _Lycus_. We traversed a very fine country, fertile with
cornfields, and after travelling five leagues, we arrived at Broug[78]
in time for bed.
This is a large Catholic village, finely situated, and belonging to the
duchy of Bavaria. We started on the morrow, Thursday, October 20, and
after having traversed a vast plain of corn-land (for in this country
no vines are planted), and then one of pasturage stretching as far as
the eye could see, we arrived, after four leagues’ journey, in time for
dinner at Munich, a large city about the size of Bourdeaux, the capital
of the duchy of Bavaria, and the principal residence of the dukes,
situated on the river Yser, _Ister_.
[Illustration: MUNICH
_From Civitates Orbis Terrarum_
_To face p. 150_, vol. i.
]
The castle is fine, and its stables are the best I have ever seen
either in France or Italy, vaulted, and big enough to contain two
hundred horses. The city is strongly Catholic, and it is populous,
finely built, and busy. Since the day after we quitted Augsburg we
could reckon the cost of man and horse to be four livres a day, and
forty sous for a footman at the lowest. Here we found curtains in the
chambers, and though there were no testers to the beds, everything
belonging thereto was exceedingly well found. They clean the floors
with sawdust boiled. Everywhere in these parts they slice the radishes
and turnips with as great care and attention as if they were threshing
corn. Seven or eight men, each one with a big knife in his hand, will
set to work on the same with regular stroke, as they work in our
wine-presses. These vegetables, like their great-headed cabbages, are
salted for winter use, and they plant them in their fields in the
country, rather than their gardens, and harvest them. The duke, who was
at this time in the city, has to wife the sister of M. de Lorene,[79]
and has by her two sons, big boys, and a daughter. The two brothers
live also in the city, but they, together with the ladies and all the
rest, were gone hunting the day we were there. On the Friday morning
we went our way, and, as we passed through the duke’s forests, we saw
countless red deer in flocks like sheep. We went in one stretch to
Kinief, an insignificant village, about six leagues distant.
The Jesuits, who sway the government mightily in this country, have
made a movement which has roused against them the hatred of the
people;[80] to wit, that they have put constraint on the priests to
make them send away their concubines under severe penalties. To judge
from the complaints made thereanent, it appears that this licence was
formerly granted to them so freely that they treated it as a legitimate
thing; moreover, they are now about to address a remonstrance to the
duke. It was here for the first time in Germany that they served us
eggs on a fast-day in any other way than quartered in a salad. At
table we had, amongst the silver, some wooden goblets made of pipe
staff and hooped. A young lady, the daughter of a gentleman of this
village, sent some wine to M. de Montaigne. Early on the Saturday we
set out and, after seeing on our right hand the river Yser and a great
lake[81] lying at the foot of the Bavarian mountains, and ascending
by road for an hour, we came to the summit of the pass, where we
found an inscription, recording how some hundred years ago a duke of
Bavaria had cleft this way through the rocks. Then we plunged straight
into the bowels of the Alps by an easy, convenient, and charmingly
made road, the fine calm weather being greatly in our favour. As we
descended from the summit aforesaid, we passed a very lovely lake[82]
about a Gascon league in length and the same in width, surrounded by
high and inaccessible mountains; and, keeping always the same road at
the base of the mountains, we came now and again upon small pleasant
level meadows with dwellings thereon, and arrived without halting at
Mittevol,[83] a little Bavarian village, pleasantly placed on the bank
of the Yser. Here we ate the first chestnuts we had seen in Germany,
served raw. In the hostelry there is a hot room, in which travellers
go to get sweated for a charge of a batz and a half. I myself went
to see it, while Messieurs were at supper, and found there several
Germans, who were being cupped and bled. On the morrow, Sunday, October
23rd, we set forth on the same path amongst the mountains, and soon
came to a house and a gate which barred the passage. This was the
entrance to the country of Tirol, belonging to the Archduke of Austria,
and after travelling three leagues we arrived in time for dinner
at Seefelden,[84] a small village with an abbey standing in a very
pleasant site.