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Matilda Betham-Edwards - East of Paris
Why should an essentially aristocratic place be so ill-kept, not to say dirty? The town is no centre of
industry. Tall factory chimneys do not disfigure its silhouette or blacken its walls. Handsome equipages
enliven the streets. But the municipality, like certain saints of old, seem to have taken vows of perpetual
uncleanliness. Alike the scavenger's broom and the dust-cart appear to be unknown.
Whilst a riverside walk at Nevers presents nothing but cheerful bustle and an aspect of prosperity, here
you approach the Allier through scenes of squalor and torpid neglect. The poorer inhabitants, too, are
very un-French in appearance, wanting that personal tidiness characteristic of their country people in
general. An aristocratic place, means an Ultramontane place, and every third man you meet in Moulins
wears a soutane. What so many cures, Jesuits and Christian Brothers can find to do passes the ordinary
comprehension.
However interesting twins may be in the human family, monumental duality is far from successful.
Unfortunately for this delightfully picturesque old town, its graceful Cathedral has, in the grand new
church of Sacre-Coeur, a double. But -
"As moonlight unto sunlight, and as water unto wine,"
is the second self, the never to be obliterated shadow of the first and far more beautiful church.
Two towers of equal height, twice two spires like as cherries and in close juxtaposition rise above the
town, an ensemble spoiling the symmetry of outline and general effect.
How much better off was Moulins when, instead of four spires, she gloried in two? Then, of a verity, the
city would have presented as noble a view as those of La Charite and Nevers from the Loire.
The ancient chateau now used as a prison and the Jacquemart or clock tower are rare old bits of
architecture, of themselves worth the journey to Moulins. Jacquemart, it may be here explained, is a
corruption of Jacques Marques, the name of a famous Flemish clockmaker who lived in the fourteenth
century. Amongst other achievements of this artist is the clock of Notre Dame, Dijon, as curious in its
way as the still more celebrated cock-crowing time-piece of Strasburg, and declared by Froissart to be
the wonder of Christendom. World-wide became the reputation of Jacques Marques, and thus it came
about that clock towers generally were called after his masterpieces.
On my former hurried visit to Moulins, as was the case with my predecessor, Arthur Young over a
hundred years before, "other occupations" had "driven even Maria and the poplar from my head, and left
me no room for the Tombeau de Montmorenci." In other words, I had visited Rome without seeing the
Pope.
On this second, and more leisurely visit, I had ample opportunity of making up for the omission. Truly,
the tomb of the last Montmorency deserves a deliberate examination. It is one of the most sumptuous
monuments in the world and as a testimony of wifely devotion worthy to be ranked with that of the
Carian Queen to her lord, the Mausolus, whose name is perpetuated in the word mausoleum.
French history cannot be at everyone's fingers' ends, so a word here about the last of the Montmorencys,
victim not so much of Richelieu's policy as of a kinsman's meanness.
When the dashing, devil-me-care, hitherto fortunate Henri de Montmorency, Marshal of France and
Governor of Languedoc, plotted against Richelieu or rather against the Royal supremacy, it was mainly
at the instigation of Gaston of Orleans. No more abject figure in French annals than this unworthy son of
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