It is time to turn from Cluny of the past to Cluny of the present. We have not far to go; for the town is still the abbey, and will be so yet, I hope, for many a year to come.

Early on the first morning of our stay, we left the little Hotel de Bourgogne, which stands on the site of the nave, in the very shadow of the last remaining gaunt tower of Cluny. The entrance to the alley is through the faÇade of the ancient "Palace of the Pope GÉlase," as it is called, a fine, fourteenth-century building, restored—rebuilt one might say—in 1783, and fronting on the old courtyard of the monastery, now known as the Place de la Grenelle, or the Place du MarchÉ, on the opposite side of which is a building that was once the monastic stable. The upper story of the faÇade has fine Gothic windows, forming almost an arcade. The trefoiled tracery is satisfactory, and exquisitely carved faces look down upon you from the corbels of the drip-stones. It was to Cluny, during the abbacy of Pons, that GÉlase II., ill-treated and threatened by the partisans of Henry V., fled for rest and refuge; and here, a few days afterwards, lying upon ashes, clothed in the robe of the Benedictine order, and surrounded by his cardinals and the monks of the community, says a contemporary, he died "as in his own house."[90] This palais du pape GÉlase is now the principal building of the secondary school, the "Ecole nationale des Arts et MÉtiers," established in the precincts of the abbey. We wandered for an hour about the building, endeavouring to fashion again, in our minds, Cluny as it was.

Standing in that echoing transept, the sole relic of the great Mother Church of Western Christendom, following the noble shafting up to where, above the mutilated capitals, sculptured with all the naive skill and courage of the time, the eye can reach the lofty vault, and follow round the fluted pilasters of the triforium arcades, I felt that, of all the thousand acts of Vandalism that the incredible, immeasurable folly and ignorance of man have inflicted upon a long-suffering world, this is the most insufferable, the most unpardonable. I can understand, I can almost forgive, a Puritan Cromwell, blinded by a fanaticism, that, though savage and ignorant, was yet, in intention, religious, battering down the statues of Mary from their niches, and shattering with fusilades the glass that, for hundreds of years, had bathed in loveliest colours the sunlit aisles of our Gothic cathedrals; but this I can neither understand nor pardon—that those who, discarding all other religions, have bowed the knee to Reason, as the most divine attribute of man, should have found, in her name, a warrant to drive a street through the abbey's cloister garth, and blast, with the dynamiter's bomb, the hoary arches of Cluny.

This chapel of the normal school, as it now is, was once the southern limb of the great transept. With the tower of the Eau BÉnite, the smaller tower of the Horloge, and the Chapelle Bourbon, it is the sole remaining relic of the church itself. Until after 1823, the transept was open to the wind and rain, which threatened ruin to the fabric. It was decided, therefore to close the gaping arches of the collateral on the east and west, and to build a wall on the north side. The immense height of the transept, emphasized by the vaulting shafts, is made more striking by the small space within which it is viewed, and the blind gallery and clerestory, with their arcades, and coupled, engaged columns, and fluted pilasters, enable one to break through, in imagination, that northern wall, and get a realistic glance, east and west, into the sanctuary, and down the five aisles of the church as it was.

The two chapels remaining in the transept, are those of St. Martial and St. Stephen. The former, half domed and lighted by three windows, is similar in style to the original apsidal chapels; that of St. Stephen is fine Gothic work of the first half of the fourteenth century. Here was buried Pierre de Chastelux, abbot from 1322 to 1343, who bought the Palais des Thermes, at Paris, where Jean de Bourbon, a century later, was to commence the Hotel de Cluny. Here, too, was buried, in the middle of the chapel, Jacques d'Amboise (1480-1510), the successor of Jean de Bourbon, and the completer of the Palais Abbatial, here at Cluny, and of the Hotel de Cluny at Paris. The brickwork of the south wall of the transept still shows the position of the two doors, one for ordinary use, and one processional gateway, leading into the cloisters.

The most important remaining building is the Chapelle Bourbon, which was added to the south end of the smaller (eastern) transept by Abbot Jean de Bourbon (1456-1480), who had his own private oratory here, whence he could assist, through an aperture in the wall, at the ceremonies before the great altar in the sanctuary. Enough remains of the decoration of the chapel to show, at a glance, that it was a good example of late Gothic art. Around it were ranged, on a series of sculptured corbels or consoles, the heads of fifteen prophets, painted in colours. They are not lacking in expression, but are clumsy and heavy. These busts served as supports for fifteen stone statues, those of St. Paul, the Virgin Mary, John the Baptist, and the twelve Apostles, all of which have disappeared, no one knows whither. The guide told us that one of these statues, that of Christ, was in gold, and all the others in silver; a statement which, if it be true, accounts sufficiently for their disappearance. The only thing of interest remaining in the grounds of the École normale is the thirteenth-century bake-house, close to the Tour du Moulin, by the river wall.

The ancient wall of the abbey is broken down in many places, and part of it is engulfed by the buildings of the town erected against it. Of the interior towers of the abbey—besides those of the church—only two remain, the Tour du Moulin, and the Tour des Fromages. The first, as we have just seen is close to the river, and the second is close to the church of Notre Dame. The origin of its curious name is not known. Of the exterior relics of the abbey, the most interesting, architecturally and historically, is the great entrance gate, which is high up on the side of the hill, at the top of the road leading from the Hotel de Bourgogne, the street that extends along the site of the nave, the narthex, the porch, and the parvis of the basilica. On your right, as you mount the rise, you pass part of a gateway, to the crevices of whose moulded stones cling rock plants and grasses—a beautiful, time-mellowed ruin—all that remains of the gate of the narthex.

The great abbey gate is a dark and forbidding piece of masonry, in the Roman manner, and evidently imitated from the gates of Autun. It comprises two arches, each with fluted, engaged columns, whose richly sculptured capitals support an ornamented archivolt. There were also fluted pilasters supporting a cornice. The greater part of these has disappeared, as has the attic colonnade, also imitated from the gates of Autun, and similar to the colonnades which exist still in the Romanesque houses of Cluny. The thickness of the pillars behind the door, and the absence of windows in the adjoining wing of the Palais Abbatial, point to the conclusion that the gate was fortified in the late middle ages, probably by a quadrangular tower. Interesting as this shattered old relic is architecturally, its charm lies in the memories of the great ones to whom it opened. All those who made the most glorious pages of the history of Cluny have passed beneath its arches—Priests and Saints, as St. Hugues, Pierre Damien, AbÉlard, and Anselm; great Popes, as Hildebrand (Gregory VII.), GÉlase II., Innocent IV., Boniface VIII.; among Kings, William the Conqueror, Saint Louis, Philippe le Bel, and his sons; Charles VI. and his uncles. Some of these passed through in humble guise, but most came with royal, or semi-royal pageantry, mounted on proud chargers, at the head of glittering cavalcades, and followed by a long retinue of lords, soldiers and attendants, to partake of the limitless hospitality of Cluny.

On the north side of this famous gate, is the Palais Abbatial, comprising two buildings, once joined, but separated at the time of the Revolution, and now serving as the MusÉe and the Hotel de Ville. That nearest to the gate was built, in the latter half of the fifteenth century, by the famous abbot, Jean de Bourbon, who added the Chappelle Bourbon to the basilica, and commenced the Hotel de Cluny at Paris.

He was, in effect, the first of the commendatory abbots, a system which Julien de Baleure rightly calls "vraye sappe de l'État monastique et ruine des bons monastÈres,"[91] since under it the rule and revenues of the abbey passed into the hands of a stranger, who often wholly neglected his charge, or, if he visited it at all, paid only infrequent, ceremonial calls.

Jean de Bourbon, though Bishop of Puy when Charles VII. recommended him to the choice of the monks of Cluny, was not a member of any monastic order; nevertheless, while still remaining the "grand seigneur," he appears to have done something to re-establish discipline in the monastery. It soon became apparent to him that the frequent visits of distinguished persons to his palace within the church precincts, were a menace to the peace of the cloister. He accordingly bought land from the monks, and built his palace adjoining the great gate, one arch of which was reserved for his private entrance.

The building has undergone some modifications, but it remains a good example of fifteenth-century work, especially the windows, which have the typical flat arch of the period, and drip-stones with finely sculptured heads for corbels. On the east side, a later age has painted imitations of similar windows upon the stone wall. Within the palace are some handsome staircases and doors, and two excellent chimney-pieces, restored, showing the arms of Jean de Bourbon, of the Bishopric of Puy, and of the Abbey and Town of Cluny. The arms of the town are a silver key, on azure, with the ring below; those of the abbey are two golden keys crossed by a sword with silver blade, the hilt downwards.

The musÉe lapidaire on the ground floor is full of interesting relics. They need not all be catalogued here, but I must point out two or three of the best. Probably the oldest relic there is a triangular memorial stone, in the corner, on the left of the fire-place, with the epitaph of Aimard (Sanctus Aimardus), third abbot of Cluny, who died in 964. Until 1872, this stone formed the threshold of a house in the town. Another relic, not to be missed, is the pierre tombale of St. Hugues (Abbot from 1046-1109), which is over the door opposite to the entrance; there is also the urn that contained his heart.

But the most interesting of all are some twelfth century capitals from the ambulatory of St. Hugues' church. All of these, though showing the naivetÉ of treatment characteristic of early Gothic art, are carved with wonderful freedom, vigour, and sincerity. Figures, foliage, fruit, and animals are all realistically produced, and grouped with a fine sense of design and decorative effect. So strong are they, that the Gothic capitals in the collection look weak beside them. The best of them represents God driving a terrified Adam and Eve from the garden of Eden. Eve is hiding behind Adam, who is draped in fig leaves. Another shows the sacrifice of Abraham at the moment when he is interrupted by the angel; another the creation of the world; and another has figures of musicians, playing various instruments, sculptured from elliptical medallions. More of these capitals would probably have been preserved, had the church been demolished with less fracas; but the revolutionaries chose the easier way, which was to blow it to pieces with bombs; consequently the capitals, falling from so great a height, were nearly all destroyed.

Among other notable things is a frieze from a twelfth century house, and a delicious cobbler's sign, of the same period, showing the man hard at work at his bench, assisted by his wife holding a little pot in both hands, while, beside them, a fiddler passes the time in harmony. There is also a charming Pascal Lamb, endowed with a seeing eye and a cloven fore-foot, which, turned upwards, balances a Greek cross. Another remarkable stone is that known as the "Belle Pierre," so named from the street in which it was found.[92] It represents two knights tilting, and a bearded man riding upon a strange beast.

Upstairs is a picture gallery containing old views of the Abbey, and a number of other things worth seeing, one of the most notable being a wooden chest of the fifteenth century, banded with iron, in which were kept the famous Rouleaux de Cluny, archives that disappeared during the Revolution. No official catalogue is published, so far as I am aware; but those who desire fuller information than I have given here, can find it in M. Penjon's book.

The Hotel de Ville is the eastern-most building of the two forming the Abbot's palace. It was built by Jacques d'Amboise, in the early part of the seventeenth century, and, during the period of the AbbÉs Commendataires, was the official residence of the grand prior. It has been so much altered within as scarcely to be worth a visit, but the exterior, though somewhat mutilated, retains much of its original charm. At the west entrance is a beautiful little tower, in transitional style, with a late Gothic arch, and cupids and foliage sculptured on the spandrils and the tympanum.

The main eastern faÇade, though somewhat unusual, is of very effective design. Its chief characteristics are two square projecting towers, connected by a raised balcony, with a double staircase surmounted by an ornamental, pierced parapet. The stone towers are decorated with sculpture, in the form of flamboyant church-window tracery below, and panels above, carved with arabesques, foliage, lilies, grotesques, shell ornaments, etc., all in the purest and lightest style of that early Renaissance work, which the discovery of Italy by Charles VIII. had been the means of developing in France. The effect of the whole, though rather conscious and artificial, is quite pleasing and graceful. On the south wall is an inscription of Claude de Guise, 1586.

From the buttressed terraces of the public gardens, around the Hotel de Ville, you get some fine views of Cluny and the Tour de l'Eau BÉnite, extending right away to the wooded hills beyond the valley of the Grosne.

Close to the great gate of the Abbey, in the Rue d'Avril, a narrow street leading upwards out of the Rue de la RÉpublique, are a number of those Romanesque houses of the eleventh and twelfth centuries, for which Cluny is famous. Up to about sixty years ago, whole streets of this little Burgundian town had remained for seven or eight centuries almost unchanged, but the utilitarian and commercial spirit of the age has made itself felt, even in this out of the way corner of Burgundy, and, one by one, the Romanesque houses are disappearing. Two remain, however, in the middle of the town; and, in addition to those in the Rue d'Avril, there are two adjoining one another in the Rue de la RÉpublique, above the Hotel de Ville. Beside these is a house of the fifteenth century. Indeed, it would be still possible, in this town, to trace the evolution of domestic architecture, almost without a break, from the twelfth century to the present time.

The Romanesque houses of Cluny follow, pretty closely, a general type. The window arcades reveal at once the great influence of the abbey church. The majority of these houses are what we call terrace-built; and are entered from the street by a door which opens into the front room, or shop, and leads up the staircase to the first floor. At the back of the front room or shop was an open court yard, with a well in one corner of it. Across the court yard a covered passage led to a kitchen at the back. The upper floor was similar in design, with a roofed gallery leading to a room above the kitchen. The first floor front room was the bedroom of the tenant, his wife, and children; while the servants and apprentices did as best they could in the attic above; for the practice of rigidly separating the sexes did not come in until the twelfth century. Each house showed a pleasing elevation, and was erected with a solidity and elegance of design far excelling anything seen in the same class of building to-day. The shop front was formed by one great arch, without windows, but closed at night by a shutter, which, dropped during the day, formed a counter for the exhibition of the shopman's wares. Customers did not enter the shop, but transacted their business across the counter, and no tradesman might call a purchase from another shop until the latter had finished his business. Different trades were kept together in particular streets—hence such names as the Rue des Tanneurs, which still exists in Cluny. Above the ground floor were two other stories, of which the upper one was generally lighted by an arcade of round-headed arches, imitated from the Abbey, with sculptured piers or colonnettes, surmounted by a carved cornice or architrave, and protected by overhanging eaves.[93]

These charming houses were among the earliest examples of domestic architecture in stone, and it is very interesting to notice that the builders have made no attempt to adhere to the principles of wooden construction; but have followed the right masters, the ecclesiastical builders. One of the best of the old houses is that popularly known as the Hotel des Monnaies, on the right as you go up the Rue d'Avril. In this case the windows are square-headed, but the most interesting characteristics are the projecting chimney, and the great arches, revealing the extraordinary thickness of the walls, a feature which lends some colour to the legend that this is the old mint of the Abbey. I will not mention any more particular houses; only let me assure the reader that he who walks the streets of Cluny remembering that the older portions of it are built with the very stones of the ruined abbey, will assuredly have his reward.

The churches of the town are not particularly interesting. St. Marcel, a somewhat barrack-like building of the twelfth century, at the station end of the town has a good Clunisian clock-tower. The building is roofed with wood, because, having no buttresses, it would not stand the thrust of vaulting. The Église Notre Dame, in the centre of the town, is more attractive; though its thirteenth-century faÇade is mutilated. Birds rest upon the backs of the gargoyles, and upon the ends of the broken shafting; and dirty children play, all day long, upon the steps of the porch. The interior, however, has some good work in the capitals, mouldings, and vaulting shafts of the nave. The engaged vaulting shafts of the aisles are probably remains of an older church, as they have squared plinths and clawed angles, transitional in style. If anyone cares to see to what a plight the lost art of making stained glass can come, let him look at the tympanum of the door of Notre Dame de Cluny. The building adjoining the church has a Renaissance door, and a thirteenth-century arcade on the upper floor.

There are two other houses, at least, in Cluny, to which, I suppose, I should draw attention. The first of them is the Hotel Dieu, a seventeenth-century building on the site of the old hospital of Cluny, of which a few vestiges yet remain. Neither the architecture, nor the kindred arts of that period, have ever aroused much enthusiasm in me; consequently, I remember almost nothing of the fabric itself, and my general impression is little more than a blaze of garden flowers, tempered by delicious palm-leaves, and dotted here and there with pale invalids, chatting in groups, or walking or sitting beside the flowers. Within the entrance hall the frail voices of nuns earnestly intoning prayers in unison awakened the religious spirit within me far more effectively than had the deserted nave of Notre Dame, or of St. Marcel. Their solemn chant and the austere cleanliness that reigned everywhere, awed me so that I crept out on tip-toe into sunlight again, without more than a glance at the famous Bouillon statues that I had come there expressly to see.

The Cardinal de Bouillon, abbot of Cluny from 1683 to 1715, had intended to erect, to the memory of his father and mother, at the southern end of the small transept of the abbey church—opposite to the Chappelle Bourbon—a monumental tomb that should be worthy of a family and individual so illustrious as that brother of Turenne, who had faced Richelieu, and played a leading part in the Fronde.

But the cardinal had reckoned without Louis XIV. That monarch, hearing of the project, made further inquiries; and decided, as the report of d'Aguerriau, which preceded the royal veto, put it, "That every part of this design tended equally to preserve and immortalize, by the religion of an ever-durable tomb, the too-ambitious pretensions of its author towards the origin and grandeur of his house."

It was an ironical fate that chose such means for preserving the statues, which were already on their way from Rome. Had the Roi Soleil permitted the erection of the monument, not a vestige of it, probably, would have survived the Revolution; consequently, its statues would not, to-day, adorn the chapel of the Hotel Dieu at Cluny. The loss of the mausoleum we need not regret; but the statues, though, to my mind, too artificial and conscious to be pleasing, are carved with skill and vivacity, and are generally considered to be among the best examples of their kind. The bas-relief of the battle scene, on the plinth below the male figure, is, to many, the most interesting part of the work.

On the way back to the town, on the right hand side, a lion, quite Byzantine in character, and taken, I imagine, from the abbey church, forms the sign of the cafÉ "Lion d'Or." In the lower part of the town, in the Rue Prudhon, not far from the church of St. Marcel, is a modest little dwelling, whereon the passer-by may read the name of the greatest Burgundian painter, Prudhon, born there on April 4th, 1758. The French Correggio, as he has been called, after the Italian master who exercised most influence upon him, represents very faithfully, in the quality of his art, some of the characteristics of the land of its birth. On this more mountainous side of Burgundy, west of the CÔte d'Or, we should expect to find, in a modified form, along with the typical Burgundian qualities of vivacity, strength, solidity, and grace, some of the passion, the sterner qualities of the harder, hill-bred race, more closely in touch with the sterner aspects of nature—especially in the case of one whose birth synchronized with the birth-throes of the great Revolution. It may be, too—and it appeals to one's historic sense to believe—that something of the stern ethical ideal of Cluny had passed into the mind of one who was born beneath the shadow of the abbey towers. Many of those, however, to whom the works of Prudhon are familiar, find greater pleasure in his lighter, allegorical paintings, such as those in the MusÉe at Montpellier, which, perhaps, show the influence of his predecessor Greuze, who, born in Tournus, by the wide pastures of the SaÔne, represents the more peaceful, pastoral, and lighter aspect of Burgundian art.

In connection with Prudhon, and with a parallel drawn between his work and that of Greuze, M. Perrault-Dabot, in his book, "L'Art en Bourgogne," and MontÉgut also, in his "Souvenirs," speak of a type of feminine beauty at Cluny, which, I must confess, escaped my notice, as it did also the not unobservant eyes of my wife.

"In the same way," says M. Perrault-Dabot, "the type of woman that one still meets to-day, at Cluny, recalls to us the shadowy grace and the warm suavity of Prudhon's talent. Cluny belongs to that region of our province where the massy heads and highly-coloured complexions that distinguish the mountain-dweller, disappear, to give place to subtler, slighter forms, and to faces of an exquisite pallor. It is not that perfect beauty in which every feature is regular; but it is beauty in its most suave and touching form."

We were the more disappointed, because, though we had not expected to find in Cluny any rivals to the classic beauties of Arles and St. RÉmy, we had come prepared for a welcome break in the monotonous plainness of Burgundian humanity, a subject on which I shall have more to say later on. Yet the types we met hereabouts, if not, on the whole, attractive, were certainly not without the individuality that natural vivacity imparts. My wife, sketching the great gate of the abbey, was scandalized by the inordinate amount of child-smacking indulged in by the mothers of the neighbourhood. I was not a witness on that occasion, but I am inclined to think, that, in most cases, she failed to allow for the excitability of a semi-southern temperament, and, could she have read them, would have found more hardness in the hands than in the hearts.

The little Hotel de Bourgogne, a white, straggling old building, snugly placed beneath the protecting walls of the Tour de l'Eau BÉnite, added its quota to our amusement. The ways of the establishment were refreshingly unconventional. For example, they rang neither bell nor gong for dinner, but sent up two maids, who popped their tousled heads simultaneously in at the bedroom door, and invited us to come down to a meal, which, by the way, quite maintained the traditions of later Clunisian luxe.

The company, too, was notable. We sat at the head of the table. On my right was an individual whose cruel, yet suffering, face reminded me of the executioner in Van der Weyden's great picture in the hospital at Beaune. I gathered that the digestive organs were the seat of his troubles; for he rejected, with a grunt, the normal fare, preferring to dine on lightly-boiled eggs, whose liquid contents he imbibed by a peculiar, sucking process, that was, in its way, a clever, though noisy, gastronomic feat.

To us there entered an angelic newsboy, ragged yet smiling. He distributed evening "Matins" all round the table, and departed, as radiant as he had come. At the far end of the table, a twentieth-century Mephistopheles, with the traditional lowering brows and cunning smile, was transmitting improper stories to a delighted Falstaffian neighbour; just as certain decadent fat abbots of Cluny were wont to do, over a bottle of sparkling Meursault, in those generous, degenerate days. The ample man on his left listened covertly, and cleaned his mouth with his fingers, while the red wine, poured in that nervous, spasmodic, Burgundian manner, gurgled from the bottle neck into the bubbling, ruby lake below.

After dinner, came coffee and cigars, in the little cafÉ adjoining, of which the floor is covered with sawdust, and the ceiling with flies. Madame, a good-natured woman, dressed in flaming yellow satin, adorned with much lace and passementerie, and possessing a very arch manner, where the men were concerned, suggested to some of her intimates that they should join her in a game of cards. Two of them at once consented; but a third invitÉ—an elephantine Burgundian voyageur de commerce—ruminating over a petit verre in the corner, declined, on the plausible pretext that he had "no small vices." Indeed, nothing about him was small! For our part, we fell into agreeable conversation with another habituÉ of the hotel, a gentleman also suffering from the amplitude engendered by two six-course meals a day, washed down with copious libations of red wine. He displayed a kindly interest in my wife's sketches, and was particularly complimentary concerning one reproduced in this book, representing a corpulent person—who might well have been himself—sitting on a dangerously small chair before a cafÉ table.

He had commenced to practise upon us his limited supply of English, when our intercourse was interrupted, during the temporary absence of Madame on domestic duties, by the advent, through the balcony leading to the street, of a small pinched boy and girl, both in advanced stages of tatters and dirt, who abruptly announced their intention of entertaining us with a "petit chanson." Taking our silence for consent, they stood, side by side, in the middle of the sanded floor, and, lifting grimy faces to the fly-spotted ceiling, proceeded, with one accord, to give vent to a series of extraordinarily discordant sounds, which, to the universal relief, were interrupted by the reappearance of Madame, who bustled into the room, and "shoved" the juvenile vocalists out of it, barely giving them time to collect largesse during their flight.

"Two young hooligans!" (apaches), she said severely, and, smoothing the ruffled yellow satin, sat down again to enjoy her "small vice."

That night I dreamed a dream. I was back in the twelfth century, as a brother, participating in a solemn mass in the great abbey of Cluny. The sanctuary and the transepts of the mighty church were flooded in the soft light, that, streaming from gold and jewelled candelabras, flickered upon the bent forms of the dark-robed priests, and threw into strong relief the flutings of the pilasters that adorned the huge piers, and the strange birds and beasts that gazed from the foliage of the capitals. Above us, the lines of the soaring vault were lost in eternal shadows, and before us a thousand lights and jewels blazed upon the High Altar, where Hugues himself, gloriously arrayed in cope and mitre, was kneeling before the holy rood. The solemn chanting of the mass sobbed and echoed down the lofty nave, across the shadowy aisles, and up to where, upon the eastern dome, the Eternal Father Himself, cloud-borne, among the symbols of His creation, lifted the Right Hand in blessing, and laid His Left Hand upon the Book sealed with seven seals. Suddenly, while our souls were pouring themselves out in rapt adoration, a fearful detonation resounded above our heads. Startled, terrified, we looked up. As we did so, while yet the echoes of the shock were rolling through the upper darkness, a series of crackling explosions shook the whole fabric to its foundations. The floor heaved, the vaulting above our heads cracked from side to side, the huge pillars trembled and tottered. Then an awful cry of alarm was stilled into the louder silence of horror, as the whole mighty building swayed, and towers, columns, vaults, and capitals collapsed, and, with an appalling crash and a roar like the fall of many waters, buried all in universal ruin.... I awoke—to find myself yet alive, in the prosaic twentieth century, while from the house opposite proceeded uproarious sounds of revelry by night, carried on with that sustained exuberance which the Latin races alone can impart to their festivals. It was not Cluny that was falling again, but furniture, glasses and crockery. Then it all came back to me—the tale I had heard of the impending marriage of Yvonne. They were worthily celebrating the occasion. Blessings upon her! I rose and leaned out of the casement. Two or three songs were being sung, simultaneously, to the accompaniment of a running chorus of applause, and an obbligato with the chairs of the salon.

Until the orgy was at an end, I lay awake, meditating upon my dream, and finding, to my sorrow, a real historical analogy between that tipsy revel and the ever-to-be-regretted fall of the stones of Cluny.

The next morning, I started on my bicycle for BerzÉ-le Chatel, a castle about twelve miles from Cluny, on the road to MÂcon. On the steps of the hotel I was accosted affably, in the English tongue, by a gentleman, whose face was quite unfamiliar to me. He assured me, however, that he had met us at Bourg en Bresse; and I, being unable either to deny or to affirm the assertion, must needs listen. Having finished with the weather, he paused, turned, waved his hand towards the gray abbey tower, that rose above our heads, and said majestically, with an air of imparting valuable information; "C'est ancien." Being still heavy for want of sleep, I just cursed him inwardly, and went my ways.

As you mount the road that winds upwards towards BerzÉ, there opens out a most lovely view over the green valley of the Grosne, whose windings are marked by tall poplars, through which shine the distant towers and hills of Cluny. Then come four or five kilometres of typical Burgundian climbing, before you gain the crest of the ridge, and find yourself looking down, and away for mile after mile, until, between a succession of rugged hills, that lie like prehistoric monsters couchant towards the southern sun, among golden vineyards dotted with ancient villages and immemorial walls, the serpenting, poplar-fringed stream is lost to sight, where at last, far off, in the blue distance, the valley merges into the great plain of the SaÔne. To the left, on a spur of the hill, guarding proudly the hamlet that shelters at its base, rise the time-bronzed towers of the great castle of BerzÉ.

The Castle of BerzÉ, now the residence of the Comte de Milly, became one of the defensive fortresses of the Abbey and town of Cluny, according to the treaty of 1250, which, through the intervention of Blanche de Castille, set forth the respective powers, and adjusted the somewhat strained relations of the lords of BerzÉ and the Abbots of Cluny. It gave to the Seigneurs of BerzÉ-le Chatel, the right to administer justice over the abbatial lords in the neighbourhood of the castle, including BerzÉ-la Ville. Moreover, it bound the tenants of these lands to come together "at the clamour of the castle," to defend and guard it, in return for which assistance, they were granted, in war time, the right of shelter within the fortress, both for themselves and their goods. From that time forward, the Abbots and Seigneurs were on such good terms, that some of the latter subscribed liberally to the Abbey, and even obtained the privilege of burial within its precincts.

In legend, as well as in history, BerzÉ has played its part. A Seigneur of the castle, it is said, piqued by a morbid curiosity, shut up in the lowest donjon an ox and a man, that he might know which would die first. Tradition avers that his passion for knowledge remained unsatisfied, since both died together. In 1315, Geoffrey de BerzÉ, tiring of his diurnal occupations, namely, hunting in the morning and beating his servants at night, raised an impious hand against, and let it descend upon, the archdeacon of MÂcon, who, through the chapter, brought a complaint before parliament; with the result that Geoffrey and his successors were condemned, in perpetuity, to burn, every year, a candle of fifty pounds weight in the choir of the cathedral of MÂcon. This fine was still being paid, up to the close of the eighteenth century, when it was customary to set forth in bad verses, on a card at the foot of the chandelier that carried the candle, an explanation of this "amende honorable."

BerzÉ-le Chatel was prominent, too, in those bloody wars of the Armagnacs and Bourguignons, which, for more than thirty years, drenched the stricken land of France in the blood of her bravest men. Later on, it fell into the hands of the Dauphin, afterwards Charles VII., who, by magnificent promises, succeeded in inducing the governor to betray the Duke of Burgundy. It did not remain long in the hands of the French; for local knowledge of the subterranean passages soon effected its recapture by the Burgundians, who, to the terror of the French soldiers, seemed to have arisen mysteriously from the earth. The last siege of the castle took place in 1591, when the Duc de Namours after making a breach in the walls with artillery, captured it for the Huguenots, whose attacks it had resisted hitherto.[94]

A path leads off the road, down through the vines, and up to the cottages at the castle foot, where you can climb, by another steep stony way, to the great, double-towered gate, guarded by machicolations and portcullis, and bearing the coat-of-arms of the house of BerzÉ. Within is a lawn, encircling a little pond, and an ivied avenue of ancient firs, whose sombre hues set off, in summer, the vivid scarlet of the geraniums, and the soft tints of the laburnum. Crossing this grassy, stoutly-walled terrace, you pass beneath another fortified gate, where scarlet creepers cling, to the court yard of the castle, bright with beds of fuschias, and masses of ball-shaped white flowers. Shade is given by a great walnut-tree; and here, too, is an adjunct, indispensable now, as in mediÆval times,—a well. The faÇade of the house shows, upon its soft, gray stone, the typical cupid's bow windows of the fifteenth century. Across the dwarf wall, the view extends away, eastward, over a lower terrace, to the trimly-kept kitchen gardens, and ancient out-buildings; westward to the vine-clad hills. This is a castle of enchantment, in whose flowery courts one can recall visions of the purple past that has floated over the towers of BerzÉ.

Leaving the castle, and passing down the great double avenue of walnuts and sycamores which connect it with the romanesque church of the Village of BerzÉ, I stood, looking at the curious staircase that leads, between roofed-in buttresses, to the church tower. An old woman passed me, carrying, by a yoke on her shoulders, two large buckets of water.

"Whose castle is this, Madame?"

"This is Monsieur le Comte de Milly's, monsieur," and she bowed slightly; whether to me or to the great name, I do not know. Two jets of water splashed over her sabots.

We went our ways; she looking down at her wet feet, and I thinking of the Marquis of Carabas—not by reason of any legendary connection between that potentate and the chÂteau of BerzÉ, but because the turn of her phrase had recalled my first reading of "Puss in Boots."

Another of the guardian castles of Cluny, that to which in dangerous times the treasures, charts, and title deeds of the Abbey were taken, was the ChÂteau de Lourdon. It was pillaged in 1575 by the partisans of the Duc d'AlenÇon, who burned so many of the original papers that Claude de Guise, after his reconciliation with Henry IV., obtained letters patent rendering valid the existing copies of the parchments. In 1632, Richelieu, who had obtained possession of the Abbey of Cluny, ordered the demolition of the donjon and castle of Lourdon, a command so faithfully carried out that nothing was left of the fortress, except what is to be seen to-day—a ruined ivy-hung wall, its line broken by a round tower, through whose windows you can see the concierge moving, and by a curious row of great columns, like organ pipes, now generally supposed to be the remains of a kind of mediÆval tennis court. From the castle rising high above the bush-covered rocks, you can look down over the grape vines to the village of Lourdon, and the hills of the Grosne valley. Looking up at it, through the houses of the village street, it must have appeared a not unworthy guardian of a trust so great as were the treasures of Cluny.

The best way to get there by the valley road from Cluny, is to turn up the hill when you come to a small sentinel tower. If you ask the way, you will probably be told, as we were, to turn at the next lane, which is longer, less convenient, and gives a much less striking approach to the castle. Persistent mis-direction of strangers is a common Burgundian failing.

Those who have wandered about the streets of Cluny may have happened upon the late fifteenth century, or early sixteenth century, house of the Prat family, the ancestors of the poet Lamartine, whose name is frequently heard by travellers in the MÂconnais or the DauphinÉ; though the nation as a whole, soon forgot him, after that swiftly rising wave of latin enthusiasm had swept him into the seats of the mighty, and, receding, had dragged him with it, to face, as best he might, the obscure, penniless life of a literary hack.

His birthplace, at Milly, is not now in existence; but the prospect of seeing the family ChÂteau de Saint Point, where part of his youth, and some later years of retirement, were passed, tempted me to pay a visit to that valley. In a very improbable, though naturally written and pathetic study of rustic life, "Le Tailleur de Pierres de St. Point"—he who died of that, unhappily, rare malady, the love of God—we have Lamartine's own description of his home.

From the mountain side projects a low hill "dominated at its summit by an old castle flanked by compact towers, and by the notched spire of a romanesque church tower. At the foot of the hill are pastures bordered with alders, cherry and large nut trees, between whose trunks can be seen the walls, roofs and rustic bridge of a hamlet built in the shadow of the castle and comprising fifteen or twenty cottages of workmen, small farmers or shopkeepers, all grouped around the village church. These old towers, undermined at their bases by the weather, and cracked by the weight of stone above them, shorn of the spires at their summits, are useless to-day, except to flank a heavy square mass of naked stone, pierced with a winding stair and several vaulted rooms—such is my abode.... Thence the view, falling and rising, extends over the most beautiful part of the valley of St. Point. One's glance, following the rapid slope of the pastures, rests upon a field through the middle of which runs the river 'Vallonge.' Great nut trees with bronze foliage, motionless as metal leaves, poplars with trunks storm-twisted, and with foliage more hairy and whiter than the head of an old man, European cypresses, alders, birches, willows rescued by me, twenty-five years ago now, from the bill of the tree-trimmer, leaning from bank to bank of the river they love and are loved by, interwoven over its course, form a lofty, floating, capricious vault of foliage of every tint, a very mosaic of vegetation. The lightest airs of summer sway this moving curtain, and summon thence waves of sound, breathings, the watery sheen of leaves, flights of birds and vegetable scents, which gladden the eyes, vary the outlook, and rise in sweet sounds and wandering fragrances to the balcony of my house."

This balcony was the construction in sculptured stone, in imitation of the old Gothic Balustrades of Oxford, that he had added to the principal faÇade. Here the peacocks perching, day and night, bordered its heavy stones with a row of living caryatides, as they spread their brilliant tails to the sun.[95]

Meanwhile, with such passages as these in my mind, I was making for the village. Having climbed the winding staircase that leads up to the terraced churchyard, I saw, as I drew near, across the tangled graves, the tomb of Lamartine, a pretentious, but quite unsuccessful, production, in bastard gothic style, the interior hung round with horrible wreaths of artificial flowers. On a pedestal was a bust of the poet, with a metal urn on each side, and, below, a recumbent statue of his wife, and memorials of other descendants.

It was with a feeling of intense relief that I turned from the artificial to the real, to the monument in which nature's art, that is not artifice, has immortalized the memory of Lamartine.

Here is the primitive little romanesque church, whose gracious tower is now hoary with years, and golden with the kisses of the sun. One's glance rests long upon those stones, where, above the slender colonettes, among the waving grasses, wild flowers, ferns, and soft moss of the slag roof, the stone corner-heads of a thousand years ago watch silently over a tree-embowered, weed-entangled, dreamy garden of the dead. For these are the living memorials of a poet—the wide, green meadow of the valley, the undulating boughs, and gray and silver glimpses of the breeze-swung poplars, the red tiles of the ancient village, the stream willow-fringed, the creamy cattle browsing in upland pastures, the gracious contours of woodland hill, touched by Autumn's mellowing hand, the blue dome above, whose silver islands float on the wings of a warm, south wind.

His memories linger, too, in melodious songs, sung by poets not less than he, the lark in the blue, the thrush on the bough, the zephyrs among the leaves; the distant tap, tap, tap, of the woodpecker in the far-off forest, or of some follower of that stone-cutter of St. Point, with whom Lamartine, high up in the mountain quarry, talked of the ways of God with man. One day, perhaps, France will realize these truths; then she will cease to desecrate, with hideous monuments, the open spaces of her ancient villages, and the resting place of her illustrious dead.

Having been assured by a villager that visits to the ChÂteau were permitted, encouraged even, I effected an entrance to the grounds, through a gate in the wall on the north side of the church. The building appears to be a patchwork of many dates, marred by some wretched, modern imitations, and the hideous device, not infrequent hereabouts, of painting sham gothic windows on a plaster wall; but the general effect of the whole, matured by age, set in finely timbered grounds, is not unpleasing. I wish I could say the same for my welcome, which might be summed up in these words: "Come in, go through; damn you, get out!"

The cicerone who, by the way, was kind enough to inform me that no part of the building was of earlier date than the nineteenth century,[96] was so rude that I felt much more disposed to discuss with her, gently but firmly, the question of manners, than to look at the many relics she was able to show me.[97]

It is obvious that only three courses are open to the owner of an historic house. He can refuse admission to the public; he can grant admission unconditionally; or he can grant admission on payment, or on other reasonable conditions; but, upon whatever terms he admits you, he must make you welcome, so long as you, in your turn, conform to the exigencies of polite society. A thinly veiled attitude of hostility deprives the self-respecting visitor of all pleasure.

Be it added, however, lest I should discourage others from visiting the castle, that the account of my experience was received most apologetically by several villagers, who assured me that the present inhabitants were "gentils," and that my cold reception must have been due to the fact, of which I was, of course, unaware, that there was illness in the house.

My wrath having been appeased by lunch, and the attentions of a good-natured hostess, I proceeded boldly to climb to the head of the Valley of St. Point, and, after many kilometres of very hard work, was rewarded by a look back over the Valley, from below Tramaye. In the middle distance, shone, in the afternoon sun, bronze and white among the tapering poplars, the Village of St. Point, crowned by the ancient gray church; and, higher yet, the sombre trees of the garden, and the towers of Lamartine's chÂteau. Above Tramaye, itself a very eagle's aerie, one by one the lower valleys open out to view, until, at last, crossing the "col," you descend, for kilometre after kilometre, to Clermain in the Valley of the Grosne, one of the once-fortified advance-guard villages protecting the approach to Cluny from the South.