TRANSCRIBER'S NOTE
Italic text is denoted by _underscores_.
Obvious typographical errors and punctuation errors have been
corrected after careful comparison with other occurrences within
the text and consultation of external sources.
More detail can be found at the end of the book.
WANDERINGS IN SPAIN.
BY
THÉOPHILE GAUTIER.
[Illustration: BRIDGE OF IRUN.]
With numerous Engravings.
LONDON:
INGRAM, COOKE, AND CO.
MDCCCLIII.
WANDERINGS IN SPAIN.
BY
THÉOPHILE GAUTIER.
With numerous Engravings.
LONDON:
INGRAM, COOKE, AND CO.
MDCCCLIII.
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER I.
FROM PARIS TO BORDEAUX.
PAGE
Departure from Paris--Subterranean Dwellings--Château Regnault--
Tours--Châtellerault--Angoulême--The _Landes_--Cubzac--Bordeaux--
The Theatre--The Cathedral--St. Michael's Tower--Mummified
Corpses--The Museum 1
CHAPTER II.
FROM BORDEAUX TO VERGARA.
The _Landes_--Arrival at Bayonne--Information for Travellers--
Urrugne--Saint Jean de Luz--Human Smuggling--Bridge over the
Bidassoa--Irun--Travelling with Mules--Primitive Carts--Beggar
Children--Spanish Bridges--Oyarzun--Astigarraga--A Spanish
Supper--Puchero--Arrival at Vergara 11
CHAPTER III.
FROM VERGARA TO BURGOS.
Vergara--Vittoria: the Baile Nacional and the French Hercules--
The Passage of Pancorbo--The Asses and the Greyhounds--Burgos--
A Spanish Fonda--Galley Slaves in Cloaks--The Cathedral--The
Coffer of the Cid 20
CHAPTER IV.
BURGOS--_continued_.
The Cloisters; Paintings and Sculptures--The Cid's House; the Casa
del Cordon; the Puerta de Santa Maria--The Theatre and the
Actors--La Cartuja de Miraflores--General Thibaut and the Cid's
bones 34
CHAPTER V.
FROM BURGOS TO MADRID.
El Correo Real; the Galeras--Valladolid--San Pablo--A Representation
of Hernani--Santa Maria--Madrid 47
CHAPTER VI.
MADRID.
Bull-fights--The Arena--Calesins--Espadas, Chulos, Banderilleros,
and Picadores--Sevilla the Picador--La Estocada a Vuela Pies 59
CHAPTER VII.
MADRID--_continued_.
The Prado--The Mantilla and Fan--The Spanish Type--Water-Merchants;
Coffee-houses of Madrid--Newspapers--The Politicians of the
Puerta del Sol--Post-Office--The Houses of Madrid--Tertullias;
Spanish Society--The Teatro del Principe--The Queen's Palace; the
Palace of the Cortes, and the Monument of the Dos de Mayo--The
Armeria and El Buen Retiro 73
CHAPTER VIII.
VISIT TO THE ESCURIAL.
Aridity and Desolation of the Country--First View of the Escurial--
Sombre appearance of the building--The Church--The blind Cicerone--
The Pantheon Pictures--Anecdote of Spanish Robbers 103
CHAPTER IX.
EXCURSION TO TOLEDO.
Illescas--The Puerta del Sol--Toledo--The Alcazar--The Cathedral--
The Gregorian and Mozarabic Ritual--Our Lady of Toledo--San Juan
de los Reyes--The Synagogue--Galiana, Karl, and Bradamant--The
Bath of Florinda--The Grotto of Hercules--The Cardinal's
Hospital--Toledo Blades 113
CHAPTER X.
MADRID TO GRANADA.
Procession of the Corpus Christi at Madrid--Aranjuez--A Patio Ocaña
and its Environs--Tembleque and its Garters--A Night at Manzanares--
Santa Cruz Knives--The Puerto de los Perros--Colony of
Carolina--Baylen--Jaen, its Cathedral and its Majos--Granada--The
Alameda--The Alhambra--The Generalife--The Albaycin--Life at
Granada--The Gitanos--The Carthusian Convent--Santo Domingo--
Ascent of the Mulhacen 144
CHAPTER XI.
FROM GRANADA TO MALAGA.
The Robbers and Cosarios of Andalusia--Alhama--Malaga--Travelling
Students--A Bull-Fight--Montes--The Theatre 208
CHAPTER XII.
FROM MALAGA TO SEVILLE.
Four-wheeled galera--Caratraca--The "Mayoral"--Ecija--The "Calle
de los Caballeros"--La Carlotta--Cordova--The Archangel Raphael--
The Mosque--Caliph Abderama--The Guadalquiver--Road to Seville 236
CHAPTER XIII.
SEVILLE.
Seville--The Cristina--The Torre del Oro--Italica--The Cathedral--
The Giralda--The Alcazar--The Caridad and Don Juan de Marana 258
CHAPTER XIV.
FROM CADIZ TO BARCELONA AND HOME.
Cadiz--Visit to the brig "Le Voltigeur"--The Rateros--Jeres--
Bull-fights--The Steamer--Gibraltar--Carthagena--Valencia--The
Lonja de Seda--The Convent de la Merced--The Valencians--
Barcelona--The Return to France 274
ILLUSTRATIONS.
THE GATE OF VIVARAMBLA _Frontispiece._
THE BRIDGE OF IRUN _Vignette in Title._
BORDEAUX _p._ 6
PASS OF PANCORBO 25
CLOISTERS, BURGOS CATHEDRAL 30
PUERTA DE SANTA MARIA 41
SEVILLA THE PICADOR 66
LADIES ON THE PRADO 75
FOUNTAIN AT MADRID 80
MADRID 95
THE ESCURIAL 105
STREET IN TOLEDO 118
VEGA DE GRANADA 163
WELL DE LAS ALGIVES, ALHAMBRA 180
EXTERIOR OF THE ALHAMBRA 182
PAVILION OF THE COURT OF LIONS, ALHAMBRA 185
FOUNTAIN, COURT OF LIONS, ALHAMBRA 187
MALAGA FROM THE ALAMEDA 219
MOSQUE, CORDOVA 251
CHAPEL IN MOSQUE, CORDOVA 253
MOORISH MILLS, CORDOVA 255
TORRE DEL ORO 262
HALL OF DON PEDRO, THE ALCAZAR, SEVILLE 270
CITY GATE, VALENCIA 297
WANDERINGS IN SPAIN,
ETC. ETC.
CHAPTER I.
FROM PARIS TO BORDEAUX.
Departure from Paris--Subterranean
Dwellings--Château-Regnault--Tours--Châtellerault--Angoulême--The
_Landes_--Cubzac--Bordeaux--The Theatre--The Cathedral--St.
Michael's Tower--Mummified Corpses--the Museum.
A few weeks ago (April, 1840), I happened, in an off-hand manner,
to give utterance to the following phrase:--"I should like to go
to Spain." Five or six days afterwards, my friends had suppressed
the prudent "I should like," with which I had qualified my wish,
and had told every one who chose to listen that I was about to
undertake a trip to Spain. This positive formula was soon followed
by the interrogation, "When do you set out?" while I, without
thinking of the obligation under which I was placing myself,
replied, "In a week." At the end of the week people began to
manifest some astonishment at seeing me still in Paris. "I thought
you were at Madrid," said one. "What! come back?" asked another. I
saw at once that I owed my friends an absence of several months,
and that I must pay the debt with the least possible delay, unless
I wished to be mercilessly pursued, without a moment's respite, by
my obliging creditors. The lobbies of the theatres, the various
asphaltic and bituminous pavements of the Boulevards, were to me
forbidden luxuries for the time being. All I could obtain was the
grace of three or four days, and on the 5th of May I commenced
relieving my native land of my importunate presence, by scrambling
into the Bordeaux diligence.
I shall pass very rapidly over the first few posts, which possess
nothing worthy of observation. Right and left stretch all kinds
of crops, streaked like tiger or zebra skins, and bearing a most
satisfactory resemblance to a tailor's book, in which are pasted
his various specimens of trowsers and waistcoat patterns. Although
these kinds of views are productive of great delight to farmers,
landlords, and other worthies of a similar stamp, they afford but
meagre entertainment to the enthusiastic and graphic traveller,
who, spy-glass in hand, sets out to note the peculiarities of the
universe in the same manner as a police agent does those of an
individual. Having left Paris in the evening, my first impressions,
after passing Versailles, are but so many feeble sketches _stumped
in_ by the hand of Night. I regret that I passed through Chartres
without being able to see its cathedral.
Between Vendôme and Château-Regnault, which is pronounced _Chtrnô_
in the language of the postilions, so well imitated by Henri
Monnier in his sketch of the "Diligence," there rise a number of
well-wooded hills, where the inhabitants dig their houses out of
the living rock, and live under ground, after the fashion of the
ancient Troglodytes. The stone obtained from these excavations
they sell, so that each house thus scooped out produces another
_en relief_, like a plaster figure taken out of a mould, or a
tower dragged out of a well. The chimney, which is a long passage
hammered through the rock, ends at the surface, so that the smoke
ascends from the ground itself in bluish spirals, and without any
visible cause, exactly as if it proceeded from a sulphur mine, or
from some volcano. A facetious traveller would not experience the
slightest difficulty in throwing stones into the omelets of this
cryptic population, and the rabbits, if they are ever absent or
short-sighted, must certainly fall, very often, all alive, into the
saucepans. By constructing houses on this principle, the trouble of
going down into the cellar to fetch your wine is entirely avoided.
Château-Regnault is a small town built upon a number of serpentine
and rapid declivities, bordered by ill-pitched and tottering
houses, which appear to lean against one another to keep themselves
upright. A large round tower, situated upon the talus of some old
fortifications, enveloped here and there in green patches of ivy,
redeems, to a certain extent, the appearance of the town. From
Château-Regnault to Tours there is nothing remarkable. Earth in the
middle, and trees on each side, forming those long yellow bands,
which lose themselves in the distance, and which, in the language
of the wagoners, are termed _rubans de queue_, are all that is to
be seen: then, on a sudden, the road dives down a couple of pretty
steep hills, and in a few minutes you perceive the town of Tours,
rendered famous by its prunes, Rabelais, and de Balzac.
The Bridge of Tours is very celebrated, and possesses in itself
nothing exceedingly remarkable; but the appearance of the town is
lovely. On my arrival, the sky, with a few flakes of snow floating
negligently over its surface, was tinged with the sweetest blue;
a white line, similar to that traced by a diamond upon glass, cut
the limpid surface of the Loire, and was formed by a tiny cascade
proceeding from one of the sand-banks so frequent in the bed
of this river. In the clear air, Saint Gatien reared its brown
profile and Gothic spires, ornamented with balls and roundings
similar to those of the steeples of the Kremlin, giving to the
city a most romantically Muscovite air; a few other towers and
spires, belonging to churches the names of which I do not know,
completed the picture; while numerous vessels, with their white
sails, floated, like so many sleeping swans, upon the azure bosom
of the stream. I should have liked to have paid a visit to the
house of Tristan l'Ermite, the terrible gossip of Louis XI., which
is still in a marvellous state of preservation, with its horribly
significant ornaments, composed of coils of rope, entwined with
other instruments of torture; but I had not time; I was obliged to
content myself with the _Grande Rue_, which must be the pride of
the inhabitants of Tours, and which aspires to the rank of another
_Rue de Rivoli_.
Châtellerault, which enjoys a high reputation for the article of
cutlery, possesses nothing particular except a bridge, ornamented
at each extremity with old towers, which present a most charmingly
feudal and romantic appearance. As for its manufactory of arms, it
is a large white mass, with a multitude of windows. Of Poitiers,
having passed through it in a beating rain, and a night as dark
as pitch, I can say nothing, except that it is paved in the most
execrable manner possible.
At break of day, the coach was traversing a country wooded with
trees of an apple green planted in a soil of the brightest red,
and producing a very singular effect. The houses were covered with
tiles ridged after the Italian fashion; these tiles, too, were
staring red, a colour which appears very strange to eyes accustomed
to the brown and sooty roofs of the houses of Paris. From a piece
of eccentricity, of which I forget the motive, the builders of
those parts commence at the roofs of the houses; the walls and
foundations follow. They place the framework upon four strong
beams, and the tilers perform their portion of the work before the
masons.
It is about this spot that the long orgy of stone commences,
which ends only at Bordeaux. The smallest hut, without doors or
windows, is of stone; the walls of the gardens are formed of large
blocks placed one above the other without mortar; along the road,
by the side of the doors, you perceive enormous heaps of superb
stone, with which it would be easy, at a trifling expense, to build
new _Chenonceaux_ and Alhambras. The inhabitants, however, are
contented with piling them in squares, and surmounting the whole
with a cover of red or yellow tiles, the different forms of which
compose a festoon of a tolerably graceful effect.
The town of Angoulême, queerly perched on an extremely steep hill,
at the foot of which the Charente turns two or three babbling
mills, is built in the same manner. It has a kind of second-hand
Italian look, which is increased still more by the thick masses of
trees which crown its rugged eminences, and a tall parasol-shaped
pine, like those of the Roman villas. An old tower, which, if my
memory does not deceive me, is surmounted by a telegraph (many
old towers have been saved by a telegraph), imparts a tone of
severity to the general aspect of the town, and renders it a
tolerably imposing object on the edge of the horizon. While toiling
up the ascent, I remarked a house daubed externally with rude
frescoes representing something like Bacchus, Neptune, or perhaps
Napoleon. As the artist forgot to paint the name underneath, every
supposition is admissible and capable of being defended.
As yet, I confess that an excursion to Romainville or Pantin would
have been quite as picturesque. Nothing can be more flat, more
inane, more insipid, than these interminable strips of ground,
similar to the little bands with which lithographers enclose all
the Boulevards of Paris in one sheet of paper. Hedges of hawthorn
and consumptive-looking elms, consumptive-looking elms and
hedges of hawthorn, with, a little further on, a row of poplars,
resembling a number of green feathers stuck in a flat soil, or
perhaps a solitary willow, with its deformed trunk and powdered
wig, compose the landscape; while, for figures, you have that of
some _pionnier_, or _cantonnier_, as sunburnt as a Moor, leaning
upon the handle of his long hammer as he looks at you pass by,
or else some poor soldier rejoining his regiment, and sweating
and staggering under his harness. Beyond Angoulême, however, the
physiognomy of the soil changes, and you begin to feel that you are
at a certain distance from the suburbs of the Capital.
It is on leaving the Department of the Charente that the traveller
meets with the first of the _Landes_, those monster patches of
grey, violet, and bluish land, diversified with undulations of
various depths. A kind of short and scanty moss, red-tinged
heather, and some dwarf broom compose all the vegetation. The
desolation is that of the Egyptian Thebaid, and every minute you
expect to see a file of dromedaries and camels; it seems as if the
spot had never been pressed by the foot of man.
After traversing the _Landes_, you enter a tolerably picturesque
region. Here and there along the road are groups of houses,
concealed like birds' nests in the thickets. These houses remind
one of the pictures of Hobbema, with their large roofs, their walls
over-run with wild vine, their well-grown wondering-eyed oxen and
their poultry foraging on the dung-hills. All the houses, by the
way, as well as the garden walls, are built of stone. On every side
are to be seen the beginning of buildings afterwards abandoned
out of pure caprice, and recommenced a few paces further on. The
inhabitants almost resemble children when they get a birthday
present of a "box of bricks," with which, by the aid of a certain
number of square-cut pieces of wood, all sorts of edifices may be
constructed. They unroof their houses, remove the stones, and with
the very same ones build another edifice of a totally different
character. On the road-side are blooming gardens, surrounded by
fine trees with beautifully fresh foliage, and variegated with peas
in blossom, daisies, and roses; the eye at the same time roaming
over meadows, where the cows are almost hidden by the grass which
reaches to their breasts. A cross path all redolent of hawthorn
and eglantine, a group of trees, beneath which is seen an empty
wagon, a country-girl or two, with their spreading caps like the
turban of the Turkish Ulemas, and with their narrow yellow skirts,
offer a thousand little unexpected details which charm the eye and
diversify the route. By slightly glazing the scarlet tint of the
roofs with a little bitumen, you might think yourself in Normandy.
Flers and Cabat would here find pictures ready made to their
hand. It is about this latitude that the "_berets_" begin to show
themselves. They are all blue, and the elegance of their form is
greatly superior to that of the hat.
Hereabouts, too, the first vehicles drawn by oxen are to be met
with. These wagons have rather a Homeric and primitive appearance.
The oxen are harnessed by the head to a common yoke covered with
a small head-piece of sheepskin. They have a mild, grave, and
resigned look, which is pre-eminently sculptural, and worthy of the
Elginetic bas-reliefs.
Most of them wear a covering of white cloth, which serves as a
protection against the flies and other insects. Nothing is more
singular than to see these oxen, dressed _en chemises_, raise
towards you their humid and lustrous muzzles and their large deep
blue eyes, which the Greeks, who were certainly judges of beauty,
thought sufficiently remarkable to furnish the sacramental epithet
of Juno--_Boopis Ere_.
A marriage, which happened to be in course of celebration at an
inn, afforded me an opportunity of seeing some of the natives of
these parts assembled together; for in a distance of more than a
hundred leagues I had not perceived ten persons. These said natives
are excessively ugly, especially the women: there is no difference
between the old and the young ones; a countrywoman of five and
twenty is as haggard and wrinkled as one of sixty. The little girls
wear caps quite as developed as those of their grandmothers, which
makes them look like the Turkish boys in Decamp's sketches, with
their enormous heads and slender bodies. In the stable of the inn
I saw a huge black he-goat, with immense twisted horns and glaring
yellow eyes. He had a hyper-diabolic appearance, and would, in
the middle ages, have made a most worthy president at a witches'
sabbath.
Evening was beginning to set in when we arrived at Cubzac. Formerly
the Dordogne used to be traversed in a ferry-boat, but the breadth
and rapidity of the stream rendered the passage dangerous, and
the boat is, at present, replaced by a suspension bridge of the
most daring construction. It is well known that I am no very great
admirer of modern innovations, but this bridge is really a work
worthy of Egypt or of Rome for its colossal dimensions and the
grandeur of its appearance. Piers formed by a succession of arches,
which gradually increase in height, lead to the suspended platform,
beneath which vessels can pass in full sail, as they did between
the legs of the Colossus of Rhodes. Tower-shaped buildings of cast
iron, with openings to render them lighter, serve as supports to
the iron chains, which are crossed with a most skilfully calculated
symmetry of resistance, and which stand out against the background
of the sky with the fineness and delicacy of a spider's web,
thereby adding still more to the wonderful effect of the whole.
Two obelisks of cast iron are placed at each end, as if before the
peristyle of some Theban monument, and form a kind of ornament
not at all out of place; for the gigantic architectural genius of
the Pharaohs would not be ashamed to own the Bridge of Cubzac. It
requires thirteen minutes, watch in hand, to cross it.
Two or three hours afterwards, the lamps of the Bridge of Bordeaux,
another, although less striking wonder, were gleaming at a distance
which my appetite could have wished considerably shorter, for speed
in travelling is always bought at the expense of the stomach. After
having exhausted all our sticks of chocolate, biscuits, and the
other ordinary provisions for a journey, we began to entertain
slightly cannibal ideas. My companions looked on me with famishing
eyes, and if we had had another stage, we should have renewed the
horrors of the raft of the Medusa, and eaten our braces, the soles
of our boots, and our Gibus hats, besides all the other articles in
request among shipwrecked individuals, who digest this kind of food
in the most satisfactory fashion.
[Illustration: BORDEAUX]
On leaving the diligence, you are assailed by a crowd of porters,
who take possession of your luggage at the rate of twenty to each
pair of boots. This is usual enough, but the most ridiculous
part of the business is the kind of gaolers stationed by the
hotel proprietors, as vedettes, to seize upon the traveller as he
goes along. All these wretches cry themselves hoarse and create
a confusion equal to that of the Tower of Babel, by their long
litanies of praise and abuse. One catches hold of your arm, another
of your leg, a third of the tail of your coat, a fourth of the
button of your paletôt. "Come to the Hotel of Nantes, sir; you
will find everything very comfortable there." "Don't go there,
sir; its real name is the Hotel of Bugs," immediately replies the
representative of a rival establishment. "Hôtel de France," "Hôtel
de Rouen," holla the crew, pursuing you with their vociferations.
"They never clean their saucepans, sir; they cook all their dishes
with lard. The rain comes through into their rooms; you will be
robbed, plundered, assassinated." Each one endeavours to disgust
you with every place but his own, and the band never leaves you
until you enter, definitively, one particular hotel. They then
quarrel among themselves, exchange blows, call each other thieves,
robbers, and other epithets of the like description, and finish by
hastening away in pursuit of fresh prey.
Bordeaux resembles very closely Versailles in the style of its
buildings. The same idea of surpassing Paris in magnificence is
very manifest. The streets are broader, the houses larger, the
rooms higher. The dimensions of the theatre are enormous. It looks
like the Odéon melted down into the Bourse. But it is in vain that
the inhabitants endeavour to fill their city. They exert themselves
to the utmost to appear numerous, but all their meridional
turbulence is not sufficient to people their disproportioned
structures. The lofty windows have rarely any curtains, and the
melancholy grass grows in the immense court-yards. The _grisettes_
and the women of the lower orders, who are really very pretty,
lend animation to the place. Almost all have a Grecian nose, flat
cheek bones, and large black eyes placed in a pale oval face of
the most pleasing kind. Their head-dress is very original, being
composed of a bright coloured silk handkerchief, worn after the
Creole fashion, very far back, and confining their hair, which
falls rather low down upon their neck. The remainder of their
costume consists of a large straight shawl descending to their
heels, and a print gown with long folds. These women are quick
and lively in their movements, and possess a supple, well-formed,
and naturally delicate figure. They carry upon their heads their
baskets, parcels, and water-jugs, which, I may mention by way of
parenthesis, are of the most elegant form. With their _amphora_ on
their head, and the long folds of their dress, they might be taken
for Greek girls, or the princess Nausicaa going to the fountain.
The Cathedral, built by the English, is rather fine; the portal
contains statues of bishops as large as life, executed in a much
more natural and careful style than the ordinary Gothic statues,
which are handled like _arabesques_, and completely sacrificed to
the exigencies of the architect. On visiting the church, I saw,
placed against the wall, the magnificent copy of Christ Scourged,
by Riesener, after Titian: it is waiting for a frame.
From the Cathedral, my companion and myself proceeded to the Tower
of St. Michael, where there is a vault which possesses the power
of mummifying the bodies placed there. The lowest story of the
tower is inhabited by the keeper and his family, who cook their
victuals at the entrance of the cavern, and live on a footing of
the most intimate familiarity with their frightful neighbours.
The man took a lantern, and we descended by the worn steps of
a winding staircase into the funeral vault. The corpses, about
forty in number, are placed around the vault, with their backs
against the wall. This upright position, so different from the
general horizontal posture of the dead, gives them a horribly
phantom-like appearance of life, especially in the yellow and
flickering light of the lantern, which oscillates in the hand of
the guide, and causes the shadows to change their place every
instant. The imagination of poets and painters has never produced
a more horrible nightmare; the most monstrous caprices of Goya, the
raving productions of Louis Boulanger, the diabolical creations
of Callot and of Teniers, are nothing in comparison, and all the
most fantastic writers of ballads are here surpassed. Never did
more abominable spectres rise from out the night of a German mind.
They are worthy of figuring at the midnight orgies of the Brocken
with the witches of Faust. Their faces are distorted and grinning;
their skulls have half the flesh peeled off; their sides gape open,
exposing, through the grating of their ribs, their lungs, dried and
shrivelled up like sponge. In one instance the flesh has crumbled
into dust, and the bones protrude; in another, the parchment skin,
no longer sustained by the fibres of the cellular tissue, floats
round the corpse like a second windingsheet. Not one of the heads
possesses that impassible calmness which death imparts, as a last
seal, to those whom it touches. Their mouths gape frightfully, as
if drawn asunder by the immeasurable weariness of eternity, or grin
with the sardonic grin of Nothingness which laughs life to scorn.
Their jaws are dislocated, and the muscles of the neck swollen.
Their fists are furiously clenched, and their spines writhe in the
contortions of despair. They appear enraged at being moved from
their tombs, and troubled in their sleep by the curiosity of the
profane.
The keeper pointed out to us a general killed in a duel; the wound,
like a large blue lipped mouth laughing in his side, is distinctly
visible;--a porter who expired suddenly while lifting an enormous
burden;--a negress, who is not much blacker than her white sisters
near her;--a woman with all her teeth, and with her tongue almost
fresh;--a family poisoned with mushrooms;--and, as a crowning
horror, a little boy who, to all appearance, must have been
interred alive. This figure is sublime with pain and despair; never
was the expression of human suffering carried to a greater extent.
The nails are buried in the palms of the hands; the nerves are
stretched like the strings of a violin over the bridge; the knees
form convulsive angles; and the head is violently thrown back. The
poor child, by an extraordinary effort, must have turned round in
his coffin.
The place where these corpses are assembled is a low-roofed vault.
The soil, which is of suspicious elasticity, is composed of human
detritus, fifteen feet deep. In the middle is raised a pyramid of
remains in a tolerable state of preservation. These mummies emit a
faint and earthy smell, more disagreeable than the acrid perfumes
of bitumen and Egyptian natron. Some of the bodies have been in
their present abode two or three hundred years, while others have
been placed there sixty years only: the cloth of their shrouds or
winding-sheets is yet in a tolerably perfect condition.
On leaving the cavern, we proceeded to view the belfry, composed of
two towers, united at the summit by a balcony of a most original
and picturesque design. We afterwards went to the Church of
Sainte-Croix, next to the _Hospice des Vieillards_.
The portal is enriched with a multitude of groups, which rather
boldly carry out the command: _Crescite et multiplicamini_.
Fortunately the flowery and tufted arabesques soften whatever
degree of eccentricity this method of rendering the text of Holy
Writ might otherwise possess.
The Museum, which is situated in the magnificent Mansion-house,
contains a fine collection of plaster casts and a great number of
remarkable pictures; among others, two small canvasses of Bega,
which are two pearls of inestimable value: they unite the warmth
and freedom of Adrien Brauwer with the delicacy and the peculiarity
of Teniers. There are also some extremely delicate specimens of
Ostade, some of the most quaint and fantastic creations of Tiepolo,
some Jordaens, some Van Dycks, and a Gothic painting, which must
be by Ghirlandajo or Fiesole. The Museum at Paris possesses
nothing in the way of Middle Age art which is worth it; it is
impossible, however, for the pictures to be hung with less taste
and discrimination; the best places are occupied by enormous daubs
of the modern school, contemporary with Guérin and Lethiers.
The port is crowded with vessels of all nations and every burden.
In the haze of twilight, they might be taken for a multitude of
floating cathedrals--for nothing more resembles a church than a
ship, with its spire-like masts, and the tangled tracery of its
rigging. To finish the day, we went to the _Grand Théâtre_. Our
conscience obliges us to say that it was full, although they were
playing _La Dame Blanche_, which is anything but a novelty. The
interior is nearly as large as that of the Grand Opera at Paris,
but with much less ornament about it. The actors sang as much out
of tune as at the real _Opéra Comique_.
At Bordeaux, the influence of Spanish customs begins to be felt.
Almost all the sign-boards are in the two languages, and the
book-sellers have quite as many Spanish as French publications. A
great number of persons can _hablar_ in the idiom of Don Quixote
and Guzman of Alfarache. This influence increases as you approach
the frontier; and, in fact, the Spanish portion, in this half-tint
of demarcation, carries off the victory from the French--the
_patois_ spoken by the inhabitants having much more resemblance to
Spanish than to the language of the mother country.