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Matilda Betham-Edwards - East of Paris
thirty kilometres to Bleneau in the Nievre. Canal life in Eastern France is a characteristic feature, the
whole region being intersected by a network of waterways, those chemins qui marchent, or
walking roads as Michelet picturesquely calls them. And strolling on the banks of the canal here you may
be startled by an astonishing sight, you see folks walking, or apparently walking, on water. Standing bolt
upright on a tiny raft, carefully maintaining their balance, country people are towed from one side to the
other.
These suburban and riverside quarters are full of charm. The soft reds and browns of the houses, the
old-world architecture and romantic sites, tempt an artist at every turn. And all in love with a Venetian
existence may here find it nearer home.
A few villas let furnished during the summer months have little lawns winding down to the water's edge
and a boat moored alongside. Thus their happy inmates can spend hot, lazy days on the river.
Turning our backs on the canal, by way of ivy-mantled walls, ancient mills and tumbledown houses, we
reach the Porte du Pont or Gate of the Bridge. With other towns of the period, Moret was fortified. The
girdle of walls is broken and dilapidated, whilst firm as when erected in the fourteenth century still stand
the city gates.
Of the two the Porte du Pont is the least imposing and ornamental, but it possesses a horrifying interest.
In an upper storey is preserved one of those man-cages said to have been invented for the gratification of
Louis XI, that strange tyrant to whose ears were equally acceptable the shrieks of his tortured victims and
the apt repartee of ready-witted subjects.
"How much do you earn a day?" he once asked a little scullion, as incognito he entered the royal kitchen.
"By God's grace as much as the King," replied the lad; "I earn my bread and he can do no more."
So pleased was the King with this saying that it made the speaker's fortune.
We climb two flights of dark, narrow stone stairs reaching a bare chamber having small apertures,
enlargements of the mere slits formerly admitting light and air. The man-cage occupies one corner. It is
made of stout oaken ribs strongly bound together with iron, its proportions just allowing the captive to lie
down at full length and take a turn of two or three steps. De Commines tells us that the cage invented by
Cardinal Balue, and in which he languished for eleven years, was narrower still. An average sized man
could not stand therein upright.
The bolts and bars are still in perfect order. Nothing more brings home to us the abomination of the
whole thing than to see the official draw these Brobdingnagian bolts and turn these gigantic keys. The
locksmith's art was but too well understood in those days. By whom and for whom this living tomb was
made or brought hither local records do not say.
From a stage higher up a magnificent panorama is obtained, Moret, old and new, set round with the green
and the blue, its greenery and bright river, far away its noble aqueduct, further still looking eastward the
valley of the Loing spread out as a map, the dark ramparts of Fontainebleau forest half framing the scene.
The town itself is a trifle unsavoury and unswept. Municipal authorities seem particularly stingy in the
matter of brooms, brushes and water-carts. Such little disagreeables must not prevent the traveller from
exploring every corner. But the real, the primary attraction of Moret lies less in its historic monuments
and antiquated streets than in its chemins qui marchent, its ever reposeful water-ways. Like most
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