Automobile travel; France -- Description and travel
As I sally forth for an inspection of the city of Dijon the first
glances show an entirely modern town of wide streets and rattling
trams, while just below me the trains rush to and fro from Paris, but
pass onward on to the left, and while you will not find a Bourges or
Rouen, you will discover many quaint relics of another period. On the
corner of the Rue du Secret and the square of the Duke of Burgundy is
an ancient mansion with a turret at its angle and an image in the niche
over its doorway. The whole is black with the passing ages and one
wonders what the lives were which were lived out there in the old days
of chivalry. It's a shop now and from the windows of the adjacent
palace no faces look down. It might have housed some dainty mistress
of the duke. In the little garden which separates it from the palace
there is a fountain and under the trees the people sleep when they will
and there, as the museum is not open just yet, I wait listening to the
bells of Notre Dame and watching the progress of a love-making between
a man and girl on the same bench. They pay no attention to me. The work
in hand is too serious for any notice of a passing stranger. Poor fool!
He is a bright-eyed, honest-looking lad and she is one of the streets
in every sense of that word. They finally move away and I turn to enter
the Hôtel de Ville where I find the ancient palace of its dukes, and
where there is something of interest even now. The vast kitchen and
its six great chimney-places, all unchanged is a curious spot. There
the feasts for the "Wild Boar of Ardennes" were prepared, where whole
oxen were cooked at once. Above it you may still see his Noble Hall
with its richly carved stone work and great chimney with flamboyant
traceries, and in its Museum, the gorgeous tombs of Philippe le Hardi
and Jean-sans-peur will hold your attention by their beauty of carving
and colour. Being in a museum, one can pardon their restoration which
has been most successfully accomplished. I have never seen anything so
exquisite as these carved draperies.
[Illustration: THE TOMB OF JEAN SANS PEUR AT DIJON
From a photograph]
Passing outward, pause a moment before the Church of Notre Dame, and
allow its curious clock, brought from Courtrai by Philippe le Hardi,
to speak. If it is a quarter to the hour, it will be struck off by a
child, if a half, by a "hammer woman," if the full hour, by a "hammer
man," and all have been doing like service for the citizens of Dijon
for six hundred years and more, and will do so for thousands long
after you are dust and ashes. We would probably pull down the church
and erect a skyscraper upon the premises, but these Burgundians love
their ancient city, and so this old shrine will stand and yonder quaint
figures continue to ring these people into life and through life and
off into the realms of heaven, where I doubt not their souls will rest
more in peace if sometimes the winds from earth waft to them the tones
of their ancient bells.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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