The cathedral is not the only lion of Bourges;the house of Jacques Coeur is an object of interest scarcely less positive.This remarkable man had a very strange history,and he too was "broken,"like the wretched soldier whom I did not stay to see.He has been rehabilitated,however,by an age which does not fear the imputation of paradox,and a marble statue of him ornaments the street in front of his house.To interpret him according to this image a womanish figure in a long robe and a turban,with big bare arms and a dramatic pose would be to think of him as a kind of truculent sultana.He wore the dress of his period,but his spirit was very modern;he was a Vanderbilt or a Rothschild of the fifteenth century.He supplied the ungrateful Charles VII.with money to pay the troops who,under the heroic Maid,drove the English from French soil.His house,which today is used as a Palais de Justice,appears to have been regarded at the time it was built very much as the residence of Mr.Vanderbilt is regarded in New York today.
It stands on the edge of the hill on which most of the town is planted,so that,behind,it plunges down to a lower level,and,if you approach it on that side,as Idid,to come round to the front of it,you have to ascend a longish flight of steps.The back,of old,must have formed a portion of the city wall;at any rate,it offers to view two big towers,which Joanne says were formerly part of the defence of Bourges.
From the lower level of which I speak the square in front of the postoffice the palace of Jacques Coeur looks very big and strong and feudal;from the upper street,in front of it,it looks very handsome and delicate.To this street it presents two stories and a considerable length of facade;and it has,both within and without,a great deal of curious and beautiful detail.
Above the portal,in the stonework,are two false windows,in which two figures,a man and a woman,apparently household servants,are represented,in sculpture,as looking down into the street.The effect is homely,yet grotesque,and the figures are sufficiently living to make one commiserate them for having been condemned,in so dull a town,to spend several centuries at the window.They appear to be watching for the return of their master,who left his beautiful house one morning and never came back.
The history of Jacques Coeur,which has been written by M.Pierre Clement,in a volume crowned by the French Academy,is very wonderful and interesting,but I have no space to go into it here.
There is no more curious example,and few more tragical,of a great fortune crumbling from one day to the other,or of the antique superstition that the gods grow jealous of human success.Merchant,millionnaire,banker,shipowner,royal favorite,and minister of finance,explorer of the East and monopolist of the glittering trade between that quarter of the globe and his own,great capitalist who had anticipated the brilliant operations of the present time,he expiated his prosperity by poverty,imprisonment,and torture.
The obscure points in his career have been elucidated by M.Clement,who has drawn,moreover,a very vivid picture of the corrupt and exhausted state of France during the middle of the fifteenth century.He has shown that the spoliation of the great merchant was a deliberately calculated act,and that the king sacrificed him without scruple or shame to the avidity of a singularly villanous set of courtiers.The whole story is an extraordinary picture of highhanded rapacity,the crudest possible assertion of the right of the stronger.
The victim was stripped of his property,but escaped with his life,made his way out of France,and,betaking himself to Italy,offered his services to the Pope.
It is proof of the consideration that he enjoyed in Europe,and of the variety of his accomplishments,that Calixtus III.should have appointed him to take command of a fleet which his Holiness was fitting out against the Turks.Jacques Coeur,however,was not destined to lead it to victory.He died shortly after the expedition had started,in the island of Chios,in 1456.The house of Bourges,his native place,testifies in some degree to his wealth and splendor,though it has in parts that want of space which is striking in many of the buildings of the Middle Ages.The court,indeed,is on a large scale,ornamented with turrets and arcades,with several beautiful windows,and with sculptures inserted in the walls,representing the various sources of the great fortune of the owner.M.Pierre Clement describes this part of the house as having been of an "incomparable richesse,"an estimate of its charms which seems slightly exaggerated today.There is,however,something delicate and familiar in the basreliefs of which I have spoken,little scenes of agriculture and industry,which show,that the proprietor was not ashamed of calling attention to his harvests and enterprises.Today we should question the taste of such allusions,even in plastic form,in the house of a "merchant prince"(say in the Fifth Avenue).Why is it,therefore,that these quaint little panels at Bourges do not displease us?It is perhaps because things very ancient never,for some mysterious reason,appear vulgar.This fifteenthcentury millionnaire,with his palace,his egotistical sculptures,may have produced that impression on some critical spirits of his own day.
The portress who showed me into the building was a dear litte old woman,with the gentlest,sweetest,saddest face a little white,aged face,with dark,pretty eyes and the most considerate manner.She took me up into an upper hall,where there were a couple of curious chimneypieces and a fine old oaken roof,the latter representing the hollow of a long boat.