CHALONS is a fair resting-place, in right of its good inn on the bank of
the river, and the little steamboats, gay with green and red paint, that
come and go upon it: which make up a pleasant and refreshing scene, after
the dusty roads. But, unless you would like to dwell on an enormous
plain, with jagged rows of irregular poplars on it, that look in the
distance like so many combs with broken teeth: and unless you would like
to pass your life without the possibility of going up-hill, or going up
anything but stairs: you would hardly approve of Chalons as a place of
residence.
You would probably like it better, however, than Lyons: which you may
reach, if you will, in one of the before-mentioned steamboats, in eight
hours.
What a city Lyons is! Talk about people feeling, at certain unlucky
times, as if they had tumbled from the clouds! Here is a whole town that
is tumbled, anyhow, out of the sky; having been first caught up, like
other stones that tumble down from that region, out of fens and barren
places, dismal to behold! The two great streets through which the two
great rivers dash, and all the little streets whose name is Legion, were
scorching, blistering, and sweltering. The houses, high and vast, dirty
to excess, rotten as old cheeses, and as thickly peopled. All up the
hills that hem the city in, these houses swarm; and the mites inside were
lolling out of the windows, and drying their ragged clothes on poles, and
crawling in and out at the doors, and coming out to pant and gasp upon
the pavement, and creeping in and out among huge piles and bales of
fusty, musty, stifling goods; and living, or rather not dying till their
time should come, in an exhausted receiver. Every manufacturing town,
melted into one, would hardly convey an impression of Lyons as it
presented itself to me: for all the undrained, unscavengered qualities of
a foreign town, seemed grafted, there, upon the native miseries of a
manufacturing one; and it bears such fruit as I would go some miles out
of my way to avoid encountering again.
In the cool of the evening: or rather in the faded heat of the day: we
went to see the Cathedral, where divers old women, and a few dogs, were
engaged in contemplation. There was no difference, in point of
cleanliness, between its stone pavement and that of the streets; and
there was a wax saint, in a little box like a berth aboard ship, with a
glass front to it, whom Madame Tussaud would have nothing to say to, on
any terms, and which even Westminster Abbey might be ashamed of. If you
would know all about the architecture of this church, or any other, its
dates, dimensions, endowments, and history, is it not written in Mr.
Murray’s Guide-Book, and may you not read it there, with thanks to him,
as I did!
For this reason, I should abstain from mentioning the curious clock in
Lyons Cathedral, if it were not for a small mistake I made, in connection
with that piece of mechanism. The keeper of the church was very anxious
it should be shown; partly for the honour of the establishment and the
town; and partly, perhaps, because of his deriving a percentage from the
additional consideration. However that may be, it was set in motion, and
thereupon a host of little doors flew open, and innumerable little
figures staggered out of them, and jerked themselves back again, with
that special unsteadiness of purpose, and hitching in the gait, which
usually attaches to figures that are moved by clock-work. Meanwhile, the
Sacristan stood explaining these wonders, and pointing them out,
severally, with a wand. There was a centre puppet of the Virgin Mary;
and close to her, a small pigeon-hole, out of which another and a very
ill-looking puppet made one of the most sudden plunges I ever saw
accomplished: instantly flopping back again at sight of her, and banging
his little door violently after him. Taking this to be emblematic of the
victory over Sin and Death, and not at all unwilling to show that I
perfectly understood the subject, in anticipation of the showman, I
rashly said, ‘Aha! The Evil Spirit. To be sure. He is very soon
disposed of.’ ‘Pardon, Monsieur,’ said the Sacristan, with a polite
motion of his hand towards the little door, as if introducing
somebody—‘The Angel Gabriel!’
Soon after daybreak next morning, we were steaming down the Arrowy Rhone,
at the rate of twenty miles an hour, in a very dirty vessel full of
merchandise, and with only three or four other passengers for our
companions: among whom, the most remarkable was a silly, old, meek-faced,
garlic-eating, immeasurably polite Chevalier, with a dirty scrap of red
ribbon hanging at his button-hole, as if he had tied it there to remind
himself of something; as Tom Noddy, in the farce, ties knots in his
pocket-handkerchief.
For the last two days, we had seen great sullen hills, the first
indications of the Alps, lowering in the distance. Now, we were rushing
on beside them: sometimes close beside them: sometimes with an
intervening slope, covered with vineyards. Villages and small towns
hanging in mid-air, with great woods of olives seen through the light
open towers of their churches, and clouds moving slowly on, upon the
steep acclivity behind them; ruined castles perched on every eminence;
and scattered houses in the clefts and gullies of the hills; made it very
beautiful. The great height of these, too, making the buildings look so
tiny, that they had all the charm of elegant models; their excessive
whiteness, as contrasted with the brown rocks, or the sombre, deep, dull,
heavy green of the olive-tree; and the puny size, and little slow walk of
the Lilliputian men and women on the bank; made a charming picture.
There were ferries out of number, too; bridges; the famous Pont d’Esprit,
with I don’t know how many arches; towns where memorable wines are made;
Vallence, where Napoleon studied; and the noble river, bringing at every
winding turn, new beauties into view.
There lay before us, that same afternoon, the broken bridge of Avignon,
and all the city baking in the sun; yet with an under-done-pie-crust,
battlemented wall, that never will be brown, though it bake for
centuries.
The grapes were hanging in clusters in the streets, and the brilliant
Oleander was in full bloom everywhere. The streets are old and very
narrow, but tolerably clean, and shaded by awnings stretched from house
to house. Bright stuffs and handkerchiefs, curiosities, ancient frames
of carved wood, old chairs, ghostly tables, saints, virgins, angels, and
staring daubs of portraits, being exposed for sale beneath, it was very
quaint and lively. All this was much set off, too, by the glimpses one
caught, through a rusty gate standing ajar, of quiet sleepy court-yards,
having stately old houses within, as silent as tombs. It was all very
like one of the descriptions in the Arabian Nights. The three one-eyed
Calenders might have knocked at any one of those doors till the street
rang again, and the porter who persisted in asking questions—the man who
had the delicious purchases put into his basket in the morning—might have
opened it quite naturally.
After breakfast next morning, we sallied forth to see the lions. Such a
delicious breeze was blowing in, from the north, as made the walk
delightful: though the pavement-stones, and stones of the walls and
houses, were far too hot to have a hand laid on them comfortably.
We went, first of all, up a rocky height, to the cathedral: where Mass
was performing to an auditory very like that of Lyons, namely, several
old women, a baby, and a very self-possessed dog, who had marked out for
himself a little course or platform for exercise, beginning at the
altar-rails and ending at the door, up and down which constitutional walk
he trotted, during the service, as methodically and calmly, as any old
gentleman out of doors.
It is a bare old church, and the paintings in the roof are sadly defaced
by time and damp weather; but the sun was shining in, splendidly, through
the red curtains of the windows, and glittering on the altar furniture;
and it looked as bright and cheerful as need be.
Going apart, in this church, to see some painting which was being
executed in fresco by a French artist and his pupil, I was led to observe
more closely than I might otherwise have done, a great number of votive
offerings with which the walls of the different chapels were profusely
hung. I will not say decorated, for they were very roughly and comically
got up; most likely by poor sign-painters, who eke out their living in
that way. They were all little pictures: each representing some sickness
or calamity from which the person placing it there, had escaped, through
the interposition of his or her patron saint, or of the Madonna; and I
may refer to them as good specimens of the class generally. They are
abundant in Italy.
In a grotesque squareness of outline, and impossibility of perspective,
they are not unlike the woodcuts in old books; but they were
oil-paintings, and the artist, like the painter of the Primrose family,
had not been sparing of his colours. In one, a lady was having a toe
amputated—an operation which a saintly personage had sailed into the
room, upon a couch, to superintend. In another, a lady was lying in bed,
tucked up very tight and prim, and staring with much composure at a
tripod, with a slop-basin on it; the usual form of washing-stand, and the
only piece of furniture, besides the bedstead, in her chamber. One would
never have supposed her to be labouring under any complaint, beyond the
inconvenience of being miraculously wide awake, if the painter had not
hit upon the idea of putting all her family on their knees in one corner,
with their legs sticking out behind them on the floor, like boot-trees.
Above whom, the Virgin, on a kind of blue divan, promised to restore the
patient. In another case, a lady was in the very act of being run over,
immediately outside the city walls, by a sort of piano-forte van. But
the Madonna was there again. Whether the supernatural appearance had
startled the horse (a bay griffin), or whether it was invisible to him, I
don’t know; but he was galloping away, ding dong, without the smallest
reverence or compunction. On every picture ‘Ex voto’ was painted in
yellow capitals in the sky.
Though votive offerings were not unknown in Pagan Temples, and are
evidently among the many compromises made between the false religion and
the true, when the true was in its infancy, I could wish that all the
other compromises were as harmless. Gratitude and Devotion are Christian
qualities; and a grateful, humble, Christian spirit may dictate the
observance.
Hard by the cathedral stands the ancient Palace of the Popes, of which
one portion is now a common jail, and another a noisy barrack: while
gloomy suites of state apartments, shut up and deserted, mock their own
old state and glory, like the embalmed bodies of kings. But we neither
went there, to see state rooms, nor soldiers’ quarters, nor a common
jail, though we dropped some money into a prisoners’ box outside, whilst
the prisoners, themselves, looked through the iron bars, high up, and
watched us eagerly. We went to see the ruins of the dreadful rooms in
which the Inquisition used to sit.
A little, old, swarthy woman, with a pair of flashing black eyes,—proof
that the world hadn’t conjured down the devil within her, though it had
had between sixty and seventy years to do it in,—came out of the Barrack
Cabaret, of which she was the keeper, with some large keys in her hands,
and marshalled us the way that we should go. How she told us, on the
way, that she was a Government Officer (_concierge du palais a
apostolique_), and had been, for I don’t know how many years; and how she
had shown these dungeons to princes; and how she was the best of dungeon
demonstrators; and how she had resided in the palace from an infant,—had
been born there, if I recollect right,—I needn’t relate. But such a
fierce, little, rapid, sparkling, energetic she-devil I never beheld.
She was alight and flaming, all the time. Her action was violent in the
extreme. She never spoke, without stopping expressly for the purpose.
She stamped her feet, clutched us by the arms, flung herself into
attitudes, hammered against walls with her keys, for mere emphasis: now
whispered as if the Inquisition were there still: now shrieked as if she
were on the rack herself; and had a mysterious, hag-like way with her
forefinger, when approaching the remains of some new horror—looking back
and walking stealthily, and making horrible grimaces—that might alone
have qualified her to walk up and down a sick man’s counterpane, to the
exclusion of all other figures, through a whole fever.
Passing through the court-yard, among groups of idle soldiers, we turned
off by a gate, which this She-Goblin unlocked for our admission, and
locked again behind us: and entered a narrow court, rendered narrower by
fallen stones and heaps of rubbish; part of it choking up the mouth of a
ruined subterranean passage, that once communicated (or is said to have
done so) with another castle on the opposite bank of the river. Close to
this court-yard is a dungeon—we stood within it, in another minute—in the
dismal tower _des oubliettes_, where Rienzi was imprisoned, fastened by
an iron chain to the very wall that stands there now, but shut out from
the sky which now looks down into it. A few steps brought us to the
Cachots, in which the prisoners of the Inquisition were confined for
forty-eight hours after their capture, without food or drink, that their
constancy might be shaken, even before they were confronted with their
gloomy judges. The day has not got in there yet. They are still small
cells, shut in by four unyielding, close, hard walls; still profoundly
dark; still massively doored and fastened, as of old.
Goblin, looking back as I have described, went softly on, into a vaulted
chamber, now used as a store-room: once the chapel of the Holy Office.
The place where the tribunal sat, was plain. The platform might have
been removed but yesterday. Conceive the parable of the Good Samaritan
having been painted on the wall of one of these Inquisition chambers!
But it was, and may be traced there yet.
High up in the jealous wall, are niches where the faltering replies of
the accused were heard and noted down. Many of them had been brought out
of the very cell we had just looked into, so awfully; along the same
stone passage. We had trodden in their very footsteps.
I am gazing round me, with the horror that the place inspires, when
Goblin clutches me by the wrist, and lays, not her skinny finger, but the
handle of a key, upon her lip. She invites me, with a jerk, to follow
her. I do so. She leads me out into a room adjoining—a rugged room,
with a funnel-shaped, contracting roof, open at the top, to the bright
day. I ask her what it is. She folds her arms, leers hideously, and
stares. I ask again. She glances round, to see that all the little
company are there; sits down upon a mound of stones; throws up her arms,
and yells out, like a fiend, ‘La Salle de la Question!’
The Chamber of Torture! And the roof was made of that shape to stifle
the victim’s cries! Oh Goblin, Goblin, let us think of this awhile, in
silence. Peace, Goblin! Sit with your short arms crossed on your short
legs, upon that heap of stones, for only five minutes, and then flame out
again.
Minutes! Seconds are not marked upon the Palace clock, when, with her
eyes flashing fire, Goblin is up, in the middle of the chamber,
describing, with her sunburnt arms, a wheel of heavy blows. Thus it ran
round! cries Goblin. Mash, mash, mash! An endless routine of heavy
hammers. Mash, mash, mash! upon the sufferer’s limbs. See the stone
trough! says Goblin. For the water torture! Gurgle, swill, bloat,
burst, for the Redeemer’s honour! Suck the bloody rag, deep down into
your unbelieving body, Heretic, at every breath you draw! And when the
executioner plucks it out, reeking with the smaller mysteries of God’s
own Image, know us for His chosen servants, true believers in the Sermon
on the Mount, elect disciples of Him who never did a miracle but to heal:
who never struck a man with palsy, blindness, deafness, dumbness,
madness, any one affliction of mankind; and never stretched His blessed
hand out, but to give relief and ease!
See! cries Goblin. There the furnace was. There they made the irons
red-hot. Those holes supported the sharp stake, on which the tortured
persons hung poised: dangling with their whole weight from the roof.
‘But;’ and Goblin whispers this; ‘Monsieur has heard of this tower? Yes?
Let Monsieur look down, then!’
A cold air, laden with an earthy smell, falls upon the face of Monsieur;
for she has opened, while speaking, a trap-door in the wall. Monsieur
looks in. Downward to the bottom, upward to the top, of a steep, dark,
lofty tower: very dismal, very dark, very cold. The Executioner of the
Inquisition, says Goblin, edging in her head to look down also, flung
those who were past all further torturing, down here. ‘But look! does
Monsieur see the black stains on the wall?’ A glance, over his shoulder,
at Goblin’s keen eye, shows Monsieur—and would without the aid of the
directing key—where they are. ‘What are they?’ ‘Blood!’
In October, 1791, when the Revolution was at its height here, sixty
persons: men and women (‘and priests,’ says Goblin, ‘priests’): were
murdered, and hurled, the dying and the dead, into this dreadful pit,
where a quantity of quick-lime was tumbled down upon their bodies. Those
ghastly tokens of the massacre were soon no more; but while one stone of
the strong building in which the deed was done, remains upon another,
there they will lie in the memories of men, as plain to see as the
splashing of their blood upon the wall is now.
Was it a portion of the great scheme of Retribution, that the cruel deed
should be committed in this place! That a part of the atrocities and
monstrous institutions, which had been, for scores of years, at work, to
change men’s nature, should in its last service, tempt them with the
ready means of gratifying their furious and beastly rage! Should enable
them to show themselves, in the height of their frenzy, no worse than a
great, solemn, legal establishment, in the height of its power! No
worse! Much better. They used the Tower of the Forgotten, in the name
of Liberty—their liberty; an earth-born creature, nursed in the black mud
of the Bastile moats and dungeons, and necessarily betraying many
evidences of its unwholesome bringing-up—but the Inquisition used it in
the name of Heaven.
Goblin’s finger is lifted; and she steals out again, into the Chapel of
the Holy Office. She stops at a certain part of the flooring. Her great
effect is at hand. She waits for the rest. She darts at the brave
Courier, who is explaining something; hits him a sounding rap on the hat
with the largest key; and bids him be silent. She assembles us all,
round a little trap-door in the floor, as round a grave.
‘Voilà!’ she darts down at the ring, and flings the door open with a
crash, in her goblin energy, though it is no light weight. ‘Voilà les
oubliettes! Voilà les oubliettes! Subterranean! Frightful! Black!
Terrible! Deadly! Les oubliettes de l’Inquisition!’
My blood ran cold, as I looked from Goblin, down into the vaults, where
these forgotten creatures, with recollections of the world outside: of
wives, friends, children, brothers: starved to death, and made the stones
ring with their unavailing groans. But, the thrill I felt on seeing the
accursed wall below, decayed and broken through, and the sun shining in
through its gaping wounds, was like a sense of victory and triumph. I
felt exalted with the proud delight of living in these degenerate times,
to see it. As if I were the hero of some high achievement! The light in
the doleful vaults was typical of the light that has streamed in, on all
persecution in God’s name, but which is not yet at its noon! It cannot
look more lovely to a blind man newly restored to sight, than to a
traveller who sees it, calmly and majestically, treading down the
darkness of that Infernal Well.