Over Strand and Field | Page 6

marriage, endow churches and journey on foot to
the Holy Sepulchre. And money! Money! Why, he would have more of
it coined by the Jews! Then the treaty would be signed and dated and
counter-signed; the relics would be brought forth to be sworn on, and
the prisoner would be a free man once more. He would jump on his
horse, gallop away, and when he reached home he would order the
drawbridge hoisted, call his vassals together, and take down his sword
from the wall. His hatred would find an outlet in terrific explosions of
wrath. It was the time of frightful passions and victorious rages. The
oath? The Pope would free him from it, and the ransom he simply
ignored.
When Clisson was imprisoned in the Château de l'Hermine, he
promised for his freedom a hundred thousand francs' worth of gold, the
restitution of the towns belonging to the duke of Penthièvre, and the
cancelling of his daughter Marguerite's betrothal to the Duke of
Penthièvre. But as soon as he was set free, he began by attacking
Chateladren, Guingamp, Lamballe and St. Malo, which cities either
were taken or they capitulated. But the people of Brittany paid for the
fun.
When Jean V. was captured by the Count of Penthièvre at the bridge of
Loroux, he promised a ransom of one million; he promised his eldest
daughter, who was already betrothed to the King of Sicily. He
promised Montcontour, Sesson and Jugan, etc., but he gave neither his
daughter nor the money, nor the cities. He had promised to go to the
Holy Sepulchre. He acquitted himself of this by proxy. He had taken an
oath that he would no longer levy taxes and subsidies. The Pope freed
him from this pledge. He had promised to give Nôtre-Dame de Nantes
his weight in gold; but as he weighed nearly two hundred pounds, he
remained greatly indebted. With all that he was able to pick up or
snatch away, he quickly formed a league and compelled the house of
Penthièvre to buy the peace which they had sold to him.

On the other side of the Sèvre, a forest covers the hill with its fresh,
green maze of trees; it is La Garenne, a park that is beautiful in itself,
in spite of the artificial embellishments that have been introduced. M.
Semot, (the father of the present owner), was a painter of the Empire
and a laureate, and he tried to reproduce to the best of his ability that
cold Italian, republican, Roman style, which was so popular in the time
of Canova and of Madame de Staël. In those days people were inclined
to be pompous and noble. They used to place chiselled urns on graves
and paint everybody in a flowing cloak, and with long hair; then
Corinne sang to the accompaniment of her lyre beside Oswald, who
wore Russian boots; and it was thought proper to have everybody's
head adorned with a profusion of dishevelled locks and to have a
multitude of ruins in every landscape.
This style of embellishment abounds throughout La Garenne. There is a
temple erected to Vesta, and directly opposite it another erected to
Friendship....
Inscriptions, artificial rocks, factitious ruins, are scattered lavishly, with
artlessness and conviction.... But the poetical riches centre in the grotto
of Héloïse, a sort of natural dolmen on the bank of the Sèvre.
Why have people made Héloïse, who was such a great and noble figure,
appear commonplace and silly, the prototype of all crossed loves and
the narrow ideal of sentimental schoolgirls? The unfortunate mistress
of the great Abélard deserved a better fate, for she loved him with
devoted admiration, although he was hard and taciturn at times and
spared her neither bitterness nor blows. She dreaded offending him
more than she dreaded offending God, and strove harder to please him.
She did not wish him to marry her, because she thought that "it was
wrong and deplorable that the one whom nature had created for all ...
should be appropriated by one woman." She found, she said, "more
happiness in the appellation of mistress or concubine, than in that of
wife or empress," and by humiliating herself in him, she hoped to gain
a stronger hold over his heart.
* * * * *

The park is really delightful. Alleys wind through the woods and
clusters of trees bend over the meandering stream. You can hear the
bubbling water and feel the coolness of the foliage. If we were irritated
by the bad taste displayed here, it was because we had just left Clisson,
which has a real, simple, and solid beauty, and after all, this bad taste is
not that of our contemporaries. But what is, in fact, bad taste?
Invariably it is the taste of