Watched over by cherubs,she is also in her robes and ermine,with a greyhound sleeping at her feet (her husband,at his,has a waking lion);and the artist has not,it is to be presumed,represented her as more beautiful than she was.She looks,indeed,like the regent of a turbulent realm.Beneath her couch is stretched another figure,a less brilliant Margaret,wrapped in her shroud,with her long hair over her shoulders.Round the tomb is the battered iron railing placed there originally,with the mysterious motto of the duchess worked into the top,fortune infortune fort une.The other two monuments are protected by barriers of the same pattern.That of Margaret of Bourbon,Philibert's mother,stands on the right of the choir;and I suppose its greatest distinction is that it should have been erected to a motherinlaw.It is but little less florid and sumptuous than the others;it has,however,no second recumbent figure.On the other hand,the statuettes that surround the base of the tomb are of even more exquisite workmanship:they represent weeping women,in long mantles and hoods,which latter hang forward over the small face of the figure,giving the artist a chance to carve the features within this hollow of drapery,an extraordinary play of skill.There is a high,white marble shrine of the Virgin,as extraordinary as all the rest (a series of compartments,representing the various scenes of her life,with the Assumption in the middle);and there is a magnificent series of stalls,which are simply the intricate embroidery of the tombs translated into polished oak.
All these things are splendid,ingenious,elaborate,precious;it is goldsmith's work on a monumental scale,and the general effect is none the less beautiful and solemn because it is so rich.But the monuments of the church of Brou are not the noblest that one may see;the great tombs of Verona are finer,and various other early Italian work.These things are not insincere,as Ruskin would say;but they are pretentious,and they are not positively naifs.I should mention that the walls of the choir are embroidered in places with Margaret's tantalizing device,which partly,perhaps,because it is tantalizing is so very decorative,as they say in London.I know not whether she was acquainted with this epithet;but she had anticipated one of the fashions most characteristic of our age.
One asks one's self how all this decoration,this luxury of fair and chiselled marble,survived the French Revolution.An hour of liberty in the choir of Brou would have been a carnival for the imagebreakers.The wellfed Bressois are surely a goodnatured people.I call them wellfed both on general and on particular grounds.Their province has the most savory aroma,and I found an opportunity to test its reputation.I walked back into the town from the church (there was really nothing to be seen by the way),and as the hour of the midday breakfast had struck,directed my steps to the inn.The table d'hote was going on,and a gracious,bustling,talkative landlady welcomed me.I had an excellent repast the best repast possible which consisted simply of boiled eggs and bread and butter.It was the quality of these simple ingredients that made the occasion memorable.The eggs were so good that I am ashamed to say how many of them I consumed."La plus belle fille du monde,"as the French proverb says,"ne peut donner que ce qu'elle a;"and it might seem that an egg which has succeeded in being fresh has done all that can reasonably be expected of it.
But there was a bloom of punctuality,so to speak,about these eggs of Bourg,as if it had been the intention of the very hens themselves that they should be promptly served."Nous sommes en Bresse,et le beurre n'est pas mauvais,"the landlady said,with a sort of dry coquetry,as she placed this article before me.It was the poetry of butter,and I ate a pound or two of it;after which I came away with a strange mixture of impressions of late Gothic sculpture and thick tartines.I came away through the town,where,on a little green promenade,facing the hotel,is a bronze statue of Bichat,the physiologist,who was a Bressois.I mention it,not on account of its merit (though,as statues go,I don't remember that it is bad),but because I learned from it my ignorance,doubtless,did me little honor that Bichat had died at thirty years of age,and this revelation was almost agitating.To have done so much in so short a life was to be truly great.This reflection,which looks deplorably trite as I write it here,had the effect of eloquence as I uttered it,for my own benefit,on the bare little mall at Bourg.
