A Pilgrimage to Auvergne/Vol 1/Chapter 1

Crossing the Field of the Cloth of Gold between Guines and Ardres, the road from Calais to St. Omer is bordered with fine trees, and, for several miles, runs by the side of a pleasant canal, but there is little to interest the traveller throughout the extent of the ten leagues he has to go before a series of handsome avenues announces the approach to the ancient city once celebrated for its abbey and its churches, but now one of the dullest towns in France. It is, however, worth while to remain a few hours in St. Omer, even ​though you have to walk to the end of the ill-paved streets, where, in a faubourg, still stands a precious monument of architectural art, the beautiful tower of St. Bertin. It is even desirable that the lover of the picturesque should mount the three hundred steps, and view the immense extent of country spread out at his feet, for, from this height the town itself has a pleasing aspect, all the gardens of the bourgeoisie being collected together in a space without the walls and forming a kind of Mosaic floor of beautiful appearance and considerable extent. Nine towns, the frontiers of Belgium, the hill of Cassel, and a wide plain apparently fertile and smiling are seen from this commanding height.

All that remains of the Abbey proves its former splendour: nothing can exceed the elegance of its pillars, the grace and lightness of its tower, but little is left to mark out the precincts of a building once the most considerable and important in the country. The land was granted to St. Bertin in 659 by a lord ealled Aldroald, at the request of St. Omer, whose bones were laid in sanctuary within the walls of the monastery. Torn from their recess by force of arms the relics figured for some time at St. Quentin, but, after a struggle between the men of peace who were at the head of each establishment, the bones were once more ​placed in the cloisters of St. Bertin, and were perhaps the very treasures discovered in 1830, when some of the “old stones” were removed to serve as materials for the now Hôtel de Ville. Certain it is, that a small chest containing bones and inscribed with Gothic letters was found in a wall of the cloisters; but it appears that St. Omer possesses few antiquarians cither learned enough to decipher the inscription, or curious enough to care what has become of the relic. At the same time, while the work of destruction was going on, and splendid capitals, delicate pillars, and carved blocks of marble were thrown down in one general ruin, destined to a future work of utility, a row of tombs appeared to the astonished eyes of the workmen, each containing a nun “in her habit, as she lived,”—the serge of the dresses still strong and fresh: but the pickaxe and spade soon confounded them in the surrounding dust, and except that the holy train may occasionally be seen winding their way up the three hundred steps, roused by the hollow voice of the great bell Bertine, they have disappeared for ever from mortal sight.

There was once a famous chalice at St. Bertin of massive gold above a foot high, the cup half a foot deep, and the circumference in proportion: a patène of gold more than a foot in diameter, a silver chasse for the bones of St. Omer, rich plate of ​silver and gold, and different objets in gold émail, the work of a celebrated Abbé Guillaume, a golden cross presented by Charlemagne, and a precious relic of miraculous virtue, no other than the head of St. Bertin; but, as may well be imagined, no vestige of any of these wonders remains. There were formerly two refectories, both fitted up with great luxury and attention to convenience, one appropriated to summer indulgence, the other for winter, and here the pious recluses appeared sufficiently to enjoy themselves: their beautiful gardens were watered by the limpid river Lia, which furnished them with execllent fish, game of all sorts was to be procured in their forests and plains, and they were protected by powerful knights whose interest it was to keep them in good humour, From their tower their own men at arms watehed over the safety of the town, and its gates were never opened till their signal had been given that all was secure beyond. Captive monarchs became the slaves of that proud and powerful community, and Childeric, the last of the Merovingians, was here forced to adopt the cowl and quit a dungeon for a cell. No pride, no glory is left now at St. Bertin except that of the guardian of the stupendous tower who looks upon everything with contempt which has not reference to his beloved bells and the rains which he appears to regard with ​exclusive affection. We indulged him by remaining till his favourite Bertine rang the hour of seven in the evening, and departed nearly stunned by the sound which she sent from her seclusion half over the Pas de Calais.

The cathedral of Nôtre Dame at St. Omer and the church of St. Denis have both features worthy of admiration, and are clean, well kept, and well restored. The Rue Royale is wide, open, and very long, but morne and deserted, and the stones of the pavement so pointed and rugged that it would appear as if there was no traffic.

We continued our route, which pointed to Champagne, by Bethune, the church of which is singular and possesses much beauty. The roof is very fine and the pillars of great delicacy, but the interior is disfigured by the paltry oraments of its altars. The belfry tower presents a remarkable and picturesque appearance, and the little town is altogether clean, wide and handsome.

Our compagnon de voyage, called Hortense by a dandy elderly gentleman in a flowered dressing-gown, who put her into the coach, was a remarkably pretty girl, so young that we were greatly surprised when she proclaimed herself a married woman, going to Bapaume to purchase mourning, for which it is celebrated, for her family, on occasion of the death of her husband's ​father, a patriarch of ninety. She was from Amiens—a Picarde, and held in contempt the whole of Artois, where she assured us we should find nothing interesting—that Arras was a blank, and Bapaume a trou: we found her tolerably right in both particulars. But for the luxuriant hedges of hawthorn in full bloom, we should have found nothing to admire on the road, and were only struck with the neatness of the villages through which we passed, and the peculiarity of the Flemish-shaped roofs, vandyked and ornamented with variegated bricks: all, however, appeared to tell of wealth and ease, and the appearance of the peasantry, neat, clean and cheerful-looking, atoned in some measure for the flatness, coarseness and uninteresting character of the whole country as far as Arras.

From the incessant noise of our vehicle as we hurried over the paved road, we were glad to be delivered, and could scarcely persuade ourselves that any works of newer date than those of the Romans had occurred in Artois since the period when they traversed the country with their victorious chariots, and made ways so extensive that a more modern race attributed them to supernatural agency. These Roman ways are however now only followed by the peasantry from village to village, and to them are known the secrets of their con​struction by the Father of Ill, who once exerted his skill in these parts, hoping to obtain possession of the soul of a young farmer who imprudently taunted him with inability to make a paved road of a certain extent between midnight,—the hour at which they probably met on the marsh,—and cock-crow. So rapidly did the Evil One set to work, and so solid and far spreading became the road he made, that but for the presence of mind of the young man’s wife, his soul must have fallen a prey to the destroyer; she, however, hit upon the notable expedient of pulling the cock by the tail as he sat at roost, and thus caused him to utter his shrill salutation to day earlier than usual. The artful One was defeated, and his road, on the very verge of completion, left as a monument to after ages of the triumph of female wit. About a league from Arras may still be seen two enormous stones, brought there under the infernal wing, and cast down in haste when he was foreed to desist in his enterprise. Another time it is related that a poor monk having been charged to form a long and difficult, road, impatient of the labour he underwent, consented to accept the assistance of a doubtful-looking stranger, who offered his aid “for a consideration.” The work went on and was soon entirely completed, when to his horror the monk found that his soul was the price to he ​paid. He had nothing now to do but to entreat the forbearance of his fellow workman till a candle three inches long should be consumed. Contrary to his usual caution, the fiend consented, and the wily monk, hurrying to the neighbouring church, plunged the candle into a vase of holy water, by which means it remained entire to the end of time, and the howling and outwitted enemy fled in despair, leaving the fine road free for all comers.

The time is past when, according to St. Jerome, a rain fell in Artois, so rich that it rendered the country a perfect garden, and with it came flakes of wool of such wonderful property that it nourished the earth in a miraculous manuer, and was called manna. At Arras the shrine has disappeared, in which a specimen of this wondrous wool was preserved; the manufactories are gone, where this or some other wool was woven into tapestry famous throughout the world; the ancient cathedral exists no longer, and is replaced by a modern building of questionable taste, heavy and vast, and devoid of interest.

The squares are large and desolate looking, but singular from the shape of the roofs, which are in the Flemish style. The Hôtel de Ville is a building of the middle ages, and is very curious, with much detail about it, the windows greatly orna​mented; but the tower has been rebuilt in bad taste, and is surmounted by a crown, which has a strange, incongruous appearance. We met here with an instance of French familiarity and vanity, combined with a certain wish to oblige, which, though we afterwards became sufliciently acquainted with similar traits in our rambles, struck us from the contrast with English manners. We were seeking for one of the streets, and inquired our way of a bonne, who was following her mistress through one of the squares: she instantly left her charge and her lady to enter into conversation with us, inquiring our reasons for leaving England and our motives for seeking Arras, obliged us with an account of her own position, informed us of her station in life, which was inferior to her birth, her godmother being the wife of the mayor of Peronne, and her desire for change having induced her to condescend to fill the office she now held. After talking a great deal, and leaving the information we asked to the last, she left us and rejoined her mistress, to whom she evidently recounted her adventure with the foreigners who had accosted her, with such embellishments to the narrative as might best suit her hearer.

Unsuccessful in discovering any object of interest, we wandered about Arras, disappointed in ​its appearance. Could we have sobered our minds down to the admiration of its fabrics of iron and sugar, we need not have complained, for a person of whom we inquired the nature of its commerce entreated us to lose no time in visiting the manufactures. That of iron, he assured us, was the most important in France, and we were content to take his word for it, not then being aware, as we were in due time, that wherever iron-works are carried on, that, spot is vaunted as producing the best in the kingdom: perhaps, as all is indifferent, one town has as much right to be celebrated for its iron as another. Our informant, seeing that we had the bad taste to show our indifference about the first establishment of which he boasted, changed the object of his eulogium, and, with an air of enthusiasm, begged us to visit the sugar mills—“voilà ce qu’il y a de sublime!” he exclaimed. Even this, however, and being further assured that the director was an Englishman, did not induce us to walk in the sun along a very dusty road to see the immortal buildings which have effaced the glories of the magnificent cathedral now no more.

Arras must have been a very strong town, as its remaining defences prove: the fortifications are being restored with great activity, and it bids fair to offer as much resistance as ever. ​Troops were quartered in all the villages through which we passed, and every thing looked warlike, The country beyond Arras continues flat and ugly, corn-fields and windmills alone appearing for leagues, and Bapaume, the goal of La Belle Picarde’s voyage, presented its evidences of mourning in most lugubrious style. Black draperies floated from every door and window, and covered the fronts of the houses, telling of woe in all directions. The rain at this moment of our journey began to descend violently, and we rejoiced to enter the inn yard of the hotel at Peronne, where we received a gentle greeting from a tame lamb whieh ran about amongst the monstrous dogs belonging to the stable: a tenement which is always in evidence before the windows of the chambers reserved for travellers as the best.

We had now entered that part of the country in early times the scene of fierce contention between the rival chiefs who struggled for mastery in France. Here the counts of Vermandois long exercised their power; here they fought, pillaged, ravaged, and subjected the inhabitants to all kinds of cruelty and oppression. Here were carried on in their greatest fury those civil wars of the tenth century, which tore France to pieces. Peronne, St. Quentin, Laon, Soissons, Château Thierry, ​all sent forth armies of robbers to desolate the land. Laymen and churchmen alike combined against the peace of their native country, and the whole of the north of France was a prey to war and its horrors. Here the Franks, the Normans, and Lotharingiens contended unceasingly, putting up and throwing down the kings they had chosen on either side, and slaughter and murder reigned triumphant.

According to a picture drawn at the time, things were in a condition which appeared without hope or remedy. “The towns,” says a chronicle of the period, “are depeopled, the country changed to a desert: as for the monasteries, some are ruined or burnt by the pagans; others, despoiled of their possessions and reduced to almost nothing, retain scarcely a vestige of order. Monks, canons, nuns have no longer legitimate superiors, in consequence of the abuse which has permitted strangers (laymen) to govern them. Pressed by necessity, they quit the cloister, and mingling with the people live a secular life. We behold in monasteries consecrated to God lay abbots with their wives, their children, their soldiers and their dogs. How can such abbots make those rules obeyed which they are even incapable of reading? Each man does as he pleases, contemning both divine and human laws and the ordinances of ​bishops. Nothing is seen but violence against the poor and weak, and outrages and robberies of the goods of the clergy. No sooner is a bishop dead, than the most powerful cast themselves instantly upon the possessions of his church, as though they had belonged to him exclusively, which, even in that case, wuld be contrary to all law or right.”

In vain were anathemas launched against the spoilers of the church; not a single baron would give up any part of his ill-gotten property, and le droit du plus fort was alone acknowledged.

Centuries since have passed, and time has effaced the memory of these doings; the power of a romancer can, however, revive them, and no one who enters the town of Peronne fails to think first of Louis XI, and secondly of that unfortunate Charles the Simple, whose fate recurred to the wily monarch when he found himself caught in the toils, and trod the floor of the same dungeon where the ill-fated king lingered out his melancholy existence. Walter Scott is as well known at Peronne as at Tours, and his fine romance is cited by the guides in the same manner, when the castle is shown. We lost no time in paying it a visit, and regretted to see how little remained of the once extensive fortress. It is, however, undergoing repair, and some of the ​towers kept up in their original strength. The dungeons and ground-floors are those parts of the original building to which tradition attaches, and these are as horrible and mysterious as any lover of the romantic can desire. First you are shown the chambers occupied at different periods by two kings of such opposite character; and it is easy to imagine the misgivings of the crafty Louis when the doors closed upon him, and he discovered the style of palace into whose recesses he had imprudently suffered himself to be led.

One can trace the steps of Balue as he retreated from the dangerous interview with his suspicious master, and the tremulous voice of Louis seems to echo through the vaults, as a word saved the devoted churchman from the tender mercies of Petit André. Whether the great poet ever visited these walls or not, he could not have described the horror of the moments passed by Louis better. Hideous and fearful is the room, lighted by one narrow window, to which a chain and bars are still attached, which was appropriated to his entertainment; and close by is the recess where Charles the Simple breathed his last. A breach in the flooring at one end discloses a grate, through the thick iron bars of which the waters of the dull black river roll along, making the gloom still more horrible by its plashing sound beneath ​the feet of the captive. A hollow in the thickness of the wall contained the bed or the straw on which Charles lay. Whether Louis was accommodated with a couch more costly, tradition does not say; but no tapestry or ornament could conceal the fact that walls of twelve feet thick hemmed in a suite of chambers even with the moat of the castle, that the thick black river yawned like a gulf in most convenient vicinity for murder, that no light was admitted but through slits barred with iron, and nothing but circling ramparts was to be seen beyond, though now a part of the country can be distinguished through the opening. In the court, just beside the entrance to this tower, is a large grating to an arched door, which opens on a subterranean way formerly leading under the bed of the Somme to the vaults of a neighbouring castle, designated “Nul me Frotte,” from whence Charles le Téméraire came secretly and silently, and surprised king Louis while in the chapel, where he was fruitlessly invoking one of his favourite Virgins. It is said, that when he heard the clank of steel steps near, he inquired if his guards had brought his enemy prisoner, and was struck with terror on learning that Charles came as a conqueror to dictate terms to himself.

The site only of this chapel is now seen; there ​is no want of the usual frightful oubliettes, which we had become familiar with in our former rambles amongst old chateaux; but with shuddering horror we declined visiting the damp dark towers in which they are situated. In roaming above, amidst the ruins, a square hole was pointed out to us, which tradition says was used as a means of conveying to the captive Louis the provisions allotted him; but this would have been throwing off the mask indeed, and probably the legend refers to an earlier prisoner, of which there were many, who doubtless groaned in the same miserable retreat, victims of tyranny, perhaps tyrants themselves.

Although for seven years Charles the Simple languished here, and is said to have died of starvation, his detainer Héribert did not desire his death, as he kept him as a means of controling the usurper of his rights; and there is little reason to imagine that he treated him with all the rigour which was exercised towards an enemy, however sad the sojourn must have been. Certain however it is, that the angular hole above communicates with the cell below, for what purpose used it is now difficult to say.