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.

Enter page number Go  Previous Next
Page 87 of 276
Words from 23845 to 24185 of 75796