The Structure Supporting
The Arch Has The Girth Of A Largeish House, And Con-
Tains Chambers With Whose Uses I
Am unacquainted,
but to which the deep pulsations of the cathedral, the
vibration of its mighty bells, and the roll
Of its organ-
tones must be transmitted even through the great arm
of stone.
The archiepiscopal palace, not walled in as at Tours,
is visible as a stately habitation of the last century,
now in course of reparation in consequence of a fire.
From this side, and from the gardens of the palace,
the nave of the cathedral is visible in all its great
length and height, with its extraordinary multitude of
supports. The gardens aforesaid, accessible through
tall iron gates, are the promenade - the Tuileries - of
the town, and, very pretty in themselves, are immensely
set off by the overhanging church. It was warm and
sunny; the benches were empty; I sat there a long
time, in that pleasant state of mind which visits the
traveller in foreign towns, when he is not too hurried,
while he wonders where he had better go next. The
straight, unbroken line of the roof of the cathedral
was very noble; but I could see from this point how
much finer the effect would have been if the towers,
which had dropped almost out of sight, might have
been carried still higher. The archiepiscopal gardens
look down at one end over a sort of esplanade or
suburban avenue lying on a lower level, on which they
open, and where several detachments of soldiers
(Bourges is full of soldiers) had just been drawn up.
The civil population was also collecting, and I saw
that something was going to happen. I learned that
a private of the Chasseurs was to be "broken" for
stealing, and every one was eager to behold the cere-
mony. Sundry other detachments arrived on the
ground, besides many of the military who had come
as a matter of taste. One of them described to me
the process of degradation from the ranks, and I felt
for a moment a hideous curiosity to see it, under the
influence of which I lingered a little. But only a
little; the hateful nature of the spectacle hurried me
away, at the same time that others were hurrying for-
ward. As I turned my back upon it I reflected that
human beings are cruel brutes, though I could not
flatter myself that the ferocity of the thing was ex-
clusively French. In another country the concourse
would have been equally great, and the moral of it all
seemed to be that military penalties are as terrible as
military honors are gratifying.
XII.
The cathedral is not the only lion of Bourges; the
house of Jacques Coeur is an object of interest scarcely
less positive. This remarkable man had a very strange
history, and he too was "broken," like the wretched
soldier whom I did not stay to see. He has been re-
habilitated, however, by an age which does not fear
the imputation of paradox, and a marble statue of
him ornaments the street in front of his house. To
interpret him according to this image - a womanish
figure in a long robe and a turban, with big bare arms
and a dramatic pose - would be to think of him as a
kind of truculent sultana. He wore the dress of his
period, but his spirit was very modern; he was a Van-
derbilt or a Rothschild of the fifteenth century. He
supplied the ungrateful Charles VII. with money to pay
the troops who, under the heroic Maid, drove the
English from French soil. His house, which to-day is
used as a Palais de Justice, appears to have been re-
garded at the time it was built very much as the resi-
dence of Mr. Vanderbilt is regarded in New York to-day.
It stands on the edge of the hill on which most of the
town is planted, so that, behind, it plunges down to a
lower level, and, if you approach it on that side, as I
did, to come round to the front of it, you have to
ascend a longish flight of steps. The back, of old,
must have formed a portion of the city wall; at any
rate, it offers to view two big towers, which Joanne
says were formerly part of the defence of Bourges.
From the lower level of which I speak - the square in
front of the post-office - the palace of Jacques Coeur
looks very big and strong and feudal; from the upper
street, in front of it, it looks very handsome and deli-
cate. To this street it presents two stories and a con-
siderable length of facade; and it has, both within and
without, a great deal of curious and beautiful detail.
Above the portal, in the stonework, are two false win-
dows, in which two figures, a man and a woman, ap-
parently household servants, are represented, in sculp-
ture, as looking down into the street. The effect is
homely, yet grotesque, and the figures are sufficiently
living to make one commiserate them for having been
condemned, in so dull a town, to spend several cen-
turies at the window. They appear to be watching for
the return of their master, who left his beautiful house
one morning and never came back.
The history of Jacques Coeur, which has been
written by M. Pierre Clement, in a volume crowned
by the French Academy, is very wonderful and in-
teresting, but I have no space to go into it here.
There is no more curious example, and few more
tragical, of a great fortune crumbling from one day to
the other, or of the antique superstition that the gods
grow jealous of human success. Merchant, million-
naire, banker, ship-owner, royal favorite, and minister
of finance, explorer of the East and monopolist of the
glittering trade between that quarter of the globe and
his own, great capitalist who had anticipated the
brilliant operations of the present time, he expiated
his prosperity by poverty, imprisonment, and torture.
The obscure points in his career have been elucidated
by M. Clement, who has drawn, moreover, a very vivid
picture of the corrupt and exhausted state of France
during the middle of the fifteenth century.
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