The foregoing reflections occur,in a cruder form,as it were,in my notebook,where I find this remark appended to them:"Don't take leave of Lamartine on that contemptuous note;it will be easy to think of something more sympathetic!"Those friends of mine,mentioned a little while since,who accuse me of always tipping back the balance,could not desire a paragraph more characteristic;but I wish to give no further evidence of such infirmities,and will therefore hurry away from the subject,hurry away in the train which,very early on a crisp,bright morning,conveyed.me,by way of an excursion,to the ancient city of BourgenBresse.
Shining in early light,the Saone was spread,like a smooth,white tablecloth,over a considerable part of the flat country that I traversed.There is no provision made in this image for the long,transparent screens of thintwigged trees which rose at intervals out of the watery plain;but as,under the circumstances,there seemed to be no provision for them in fact,Iwill let my metaphor go for what it is worth.My journey was (as I remember it)of about an hour and a half;but I passed no object of interest,as the phrase is,whatever.The phrase hardly applies even to Bourg itself,which is simply a town quelconque,as M.Zola would say.Small,peaceful,rustic,it stands in the midst of the great dairyfeeding plains of Bresse,of which fat county,sometime property of the house of Savoy,it was the modest capital.The blue masses of the Jura give it a creditable horizon,but the only nearer feature it can point to is its famous sepulchral church.This edifice lies at a fortunate distance from the town,which,though inoffensive,is of too common a stamp to consort with such a treasure.All I ever knew of the church of Brou I had gathered,years ago,from Matthew Arnold's beautiful poem,which bears its name.I remember thinking,in those years,that it was impossible verses could be more touching than these;and as I stood before the object of my pilgrimage,in the gay French light (though the place was so dull),I recalled the spot where I had first read them,and where I read them again and yet again,wondering whether it would ever be my fortune to visit the church of Brou.The spot in question was an armchair in a window which looked out on some cows in a field;and whenever I glanced at the cows it came over me I scarcely know why that I should probably never behold the structure reared by the Duchess Margaret.Some of our visions never come to pass;but we must be just,others do."So sleep,forever sleep,O princely pair!"I remembered that line of Matthew Arnold's,and the stanza about the Duchess Margaret coming to watch the builders on her palfry white.Then there came to me something in regard to the moon shining on winter nights through the cold clerestory.The tone of the place at that hour was not at all lunar;it was cold and bright,but with the chill of an autumn morning;yet this,even with the fact of the unexpected remoteness of the church from the Jura added to it,did not prevent me from feeling that I looked at a monument in the production of which or at least in the effect of which on the tourist mind of today Matthew Arnold had been much concerned.By a pardonable license he has placed it a few miles nearer to the forests of the Jura than it stands at present.It is very true that,though the mountains in the sixteenth century can hardly have been in a different position,the plain which separates the church from them may have been bedecked with woods.The visitor today cannot help wondering why the beautiful building,with its splendid works of art,is dropped down in that particular spot,which looks so accidental and arbitrary.But there are reasons for most things,and there were reasons why the church of Brou should be at Brou,which is a vague little suburb of a vague little town.
The responsibility rests,at any rate,upon the Duchess Margaret,Margaret of Austria,daughter of the Emperor Maximilian and his wife Mary of Burgundy,daughter of Charles the Bold.This lady has a high name in history,having been regent of the Netherlands in behalf of her nephew,the Emperor Charles V.,of whose early education she had had the care.She married in 1501Philibert the Handsome,Duke of Savoy,to whom the province of Bresse belonged,and who died two years later.She had been betrothed,is a child,to Charles VIII.of France,and was kept for some time at the French court,that of her prospective fatherinlaw,Louis XI.;but she was eventually repudiated,in order that her fiance might marry Anne of Brittany,an alliance so magnificently political that we almost condone the offence to a sensitive princess.Margaret did not want for husbands,however,inasmuch as before her marriage to Philibert she had been united to John of Castile,son of Ferdinand V.,King of Aragon,an episode terminated,by the death of the Spanish prince,within a year.She was twentytwo years regent of the Netherlands,and died at fiftyone,in 1530.She might have been,had she chosen,the wife,of Henry VII.of England.She was one of the signers of the League of Cambray,against the Venetian republic,and was a most politic,accomplished,and judicious princess.
She undertook to build the church of Brou as a mausoleum,for her second husband and herself,in fulfilment of a vow made by Margaret of Bourbon,mother of Philibert,who died before she could redeem her pledge,and who bequeathed the duty to her son.He died shortly afterwards,and his widow assumed the pious task.According to Murray,she intrusted the erection of the church to "Maistre Loys von Berghem,"and the sculpture to "Maistre Conrad."The author of a superstitious but carefully prepared little Notice,which I bought at Bourg,calls the architect and sculptor (at once)Jehan de Paris,author (sic)of the tomb of Francis II.of Brittany,to which we gave some attention at Nantes,and which the writer of my pamphlet ascribes only subordinately to Michel Colomb.