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him as he was last night. The landlord scratches his head. The
brave Courier points to certain figures in the bill, and intimates
that if they remain there, the Hotel de l'Ecu d'Or is thenceforth
and for ever an hotel de l'Ecu de cuivre. The landlord goes into a
little counting-house. The brave Courier follows, forces the bill
and a pen into his hand, and talks more rapidly than ever. The
landlord takes the pen. The Courier smiles. The landlord makes an
alteration. The Courier cuts a joke. The landlord is
affectionate, but not weakly so. He bears it like a man. He
shakes hands with his brave brother, but he don't hug him. Still,
he loves his brother; for he knows that he will be returning that
way, one of these fine days, with another family, and he foresees
that his heart will yearn towards him again. The brave Courier
traverses all round the carriage once, looks at the drag, inspects
the wheels, jumps up, gives the word, and away we go!
It is market morning. The market is held in the little square
outside in front of the cathedral. It is crowded with men and
women, in blue, in red, in green, in white; with canvassed stalls;
and fluttering merchandise. The country people are grouped about,
with their clean baskets before them. Here, the lace-sellers;
there, the butter and egg-sellers; there, the fruit-sellers; there,
the shoe-makers. The whole place looks as if it were the stage of
some great theatre, and the curtain had just run up, for a
picturesque ballet. And there is the cathedral to boot: scenelike:
all grim, and swarthy, and mouldering, and cold: just
splashing the pavement in one place with faint purple drops, as the
morning sun, entering by a little window on the eastern side,
struggles through some stained glass panes, on the western.
In five minutes we have passed the iron cross, with a little ragged
kneeling-place of turf before it, in the outskirts of the town; and
are again upon the road.
CHAPTER II - LYONS, THE RHONE, AND THE GOBLIN OF AVIGNON
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
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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
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 la
st 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
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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 underdone-
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 oneeyed
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 signpainters,
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
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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
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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