Wanderings in Spain. Theophile Gautier

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      BORDEAUX

      On leaving the diligence, you are assailed by a crowd of porters, who take possession of your luggage at the rate of twenty to each pair of boots. This is usual enough, but the most ridiculous part of the business is the kind of gaolers stationed by the hotel proprietors, as vedettes, to seize upon the traveller as he goes along. All these wretches cry themselves hoarse and create a confusion equal to that of the Tower of Babel, by their long litanies of praise and abuse. One catches hold of your arm, another of your leg, a third of the tail of your coat, a fourth of the button of your paletôt. "Come to the Hotel of Nantes, sir; you will find everything very comfortable there." "Don't go there, sir; its real name is the Hotel of Bugs," immediately replies the representative of a rival establishment. "Hôtel de France," "Hôtel de Rouen," holla the crew, pursuing you with their vociferations. "They never clean their saucepans, sir; they cook all their dishes with lard. The rain comes through into their rooms; you will be robbed, plundered, assassinated." Each one endeavours to disgust you with every place but his own, and the band never leaves you until you enter, definitively, one particular hotel. They then quarrel among themselves, exchange blows, call each other thieves, robbers, and other epithets of the like description, and finish by hastening away in pursuit of fresh prey.

      Bordeaux resembles very closely Versailles in the style of its buildings. The same idea of surpassing Paris in magnificence is very manifest. The streets are broader, the houses larger, the rooms higher. The dimensions of the theatre are enormous. It looks like the Odéon melted down into the Bourse. But it is in vain that the inhabitants endeavour to fill their city. They exert themselves to the utmost to appear numerous, but all their meridional turbulence is not sufficient to people their disproportioned structures. The lofty windows have rarely any curtains, and the melancholy grass grows in the immense court-yards. The grisettes and the women of the lower orders, who are really very pretty, lend animation to the place. Almost all have a Grecian nose, flat cheek bones, and large black eyes placed in a pale oval face of the most pleasing kind. Their head-dress is very original, being composed of a bright coloured silk handkerchief, worn after the Creole fashion, very far back, and confining their hair, which falls rather low down upon their neck. The remainder of their costume consists of a large straight shawl descending to their heels, and a print gown with long folds. These women are quick and lively in their movements, and possess a supple, well-formed, and naturally delicate figure. They carry upon their heads their baskets, parcels, and water-jugs, which, I may mention by way of parenthesis, are of the most elegant form. With their amphora on their head, and the long folds of their dress, they might be taken for Greek girls, or the princess Nausicaa going to the fountain.

      The Cathedral, built by the English, is rather fine; the portal contains statues of bishops as large as life, executed in a much more natural and careful style than the ordinary Gothic statues, which are handled like arabesques, and completely sacrificed to the exigencies of the architect. On visiting the church, I saw, placed against the wall, the magnificent copy of Christ Scourged, by Riesener, after Titian: it is waiting for a frame.

      From the Cathedral, my companion and myself proceeded to the Tower of St. Michael, where there is a vault which possesses the power of mummifying the bodies placed there. The lowest story of the tower is inhabited by the keeper and his family, who cook their victuals at the entrance of the cavern, and live on a footing of the most intimate familiarity with their frightful neighbours. The man took a lantern, and we descended by the worn steps of a winding staircase into the funeral vault. The corpses, about forty in number, are placed around the vault, with their backs against the wall. This upright position, so different from the general horizontal posture of the dead, gives them a horribly phantom-like appearance of life, especially in the yellow and flickering light of the lantern, which oscillates in the hand of the guide, and causes the shadows to change their place every instant. The imagination of poets and painters has never produced a more horrible nightmare; the most monstrous caprices of Goya, the raving productions of Louis Boulanger, the diabolical creations of Callot and of Teniers, are nothing in comparison, and all the most fantastic writers of ballads are here surpassed. Never did more abominable spectres rise from out the night of a German mind. They are worthy of figuring at the midnight orgies of the Brocken with the witches of Faust. Their faces are distorted and grinning; their skulls have half the flesh peeled off; their sides gape open, exposing, through the grating of their ribs, their lungs, dried and shrivelled up like sponge. In one instance the flesh has crumbled into dust, and the bones protrude; in another, the parchment skin, no longer sustained by the fibres of the cellular tissue, floats round the corpse like a second windingsheet. Not one of the heads possesses that impassible calmness which death imparts, as a last seal, to those whom it touches. Their mouths gape frightfully, as if drawn asunder by the immeasurable weariness of eternity, or grin with the sardonic grin of Nothingness which laughs life to scorn. Their jaws are dislocated, and the muscles of the neck swollen. Their fists are furiously clenched, and their spines writhe in the contortions of despair. They appear enraged at being moved from their tombs, and troubled in their sleep by the curiosity of the profane.

      The keeper pointed out to us a general killed in a duel; the wound, like a large blue lipped mouth laughing in his side, is distinctly visible;—a porter who expired suddenly while lifting an enormous burden;—a negress, who is not much blacker than her white sisters near her;—a woman with all her teeth, and with her tongue almost fresh;—a family poisoned with mushrooms;—and, as a crowning horror, a little boy who, to all appearance, must have been interred alive. This figure is sublime with pain and despair; never was the expression of human suffering carried to a greater extent. The nails are buried in the palms of the hands; the nerves are stretched like the strings of a violin over the bridge; the knees form convulsive angles; and the head is violently thrown back. The poor child, by an extraordinary effort, must have turned round in his coffin.

      The place where these corpses are assembled is a low-roofed vault. The soil, which is of suspicious elasticity, is composed of human detritus, fifteen feet deep. In the middle is raised a pyramid of remains in a tolerable state of preservation. These mummies emit a faint and earthy smell, more disagreeable than the acrid perfumes of bitumen and Egyptian natron. Some of the bodies have been in their present abode two or three hundred years, while others have been placed there sixty years only: the cloth of their shrouds or winding-sheets is yet in a tolerably perfect condition.

      On leaving the cavern, we proceeded to view the belfry, composed of two towers, united at the summit by a balcony of a most original and picturesque design. We afterwards went to the Church of Sainte-Croix, next to the Hospice des Vieillards.

      The portal is enriched with a multitude of groups, which rather boldly carry out the command: Crescite et СКАЧАТЬ