A Visit to the Monastery of La Trappe in 1817: With Notes Taken During a Tour Through Le Perche, Normandy, Bretagne, Poitou, Anjou, Le Bocage, Touraine, Orleanois, and the Environs of Paris.; Illustrated with Numerous Coloured Engravings, from Drawings Made on the SpotFellowes, W. D. (William Dorset)
Religion
A Visit to the Monastery of La Trappe in 1817: With Notes Taken During a Tour Through Le Perche, Normandy, Bretagne, Poitou, Anjou, Le Bocage, Touraine, Orleanois, and the Environs of Paris.; Illustrated with Numerous Coloured Engravings, from Drawings Made on the Spot
Fellowes, W. D. (William Dorset)
Abbaye de la Trappe (Soligny-la-Trappe, France); France -- Description and travel
Who could be otherwise than powerfully affected, as I was, by the
first objects that presented themselves to me on entering the
place?--A mother and her two sons, kneeling in pious devotion at the
foot of the husband's and the father's grave! At a short distance, a
female of elegant form, watering and dressing the earth around some
plants at her lover's tomb!--not a day, and seldom an hour, passes,
but some one is seen either weeping over the remains of a departed
relative, or watching with pious solicitude the flowers that spring up
around it.
Among the many interesting objects that presented themselves at my
first visit, was the tomb of Abélard and Héloïse, which had not long
since been removed from the convent of the Augustins, where I had seen
it in 1815.
At a little distance, to the left of the former, was the burial place
of Labédoyère. The fate of this brave and unfortunate officer is well
known; his youth, and misled zeal, have procured him a sympathy which
his fellow sufferer Marshal Ney did not find, and did not merit.
In the centre of a square plot of ground enclosed with lattice work,
is erected a wooden cross, painted black. Neither marble, nor stone,
nor letters, indicate his name. Two pots of roses, and a tuft of
violets, alone marked the spot, which is carefully weeded. There is
something more affecting in all this simplicity, something, in my
mind, that goes more directly home to the heart, than in the most
splendid monument or the most studied eulogium. As we came suddenly up
we saw two females clad in deep mourning, weeping over it; at each
arm of the cross was suspended a garland of flowers; we were about to
retire again immediately, from the fear of disturbing their melancholy
devotions, when the concierge, with a brutality indescribable, rushed
forward, and removing the garlands, threw them among the shrubs at a
considerable distance. The friend who accompanied me, after searching,
recovered one of the garlands, and with more gallantry perhaps than
policy, immediately replaced it, and reproaching the keeper with his
unmanly conduct, vowed vengeance if he dared to interrupt the ladies,
again, when bowing to them we retired.
As we were about to quit the place some time after, we were arrested
by two gendarmes, and it was not till after a detention of some
hours, and a long discussion between the police officers who had
been summoned to attend, and being threatened to be sent to the
Conciergerie prison, that we were allowed to depart.
The following words were engraved on a plain marble slab that covered
the remains of Marshal Ney.
CI GIT
LE MARÉCHAL NEY
DUC D'ECHLINGEN
PRINCE DE MOSCOWA
DÉCÉDÉ le 7, Decembre, 1815.
The grave of the Marshal, as well as that of Labédoyère, when I again
visited the spot, had been stripped of every thing, and the railing
around them removed so as to prevent any one from discovering the
place of their interment.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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