Читать книгу Harper's New Monthly Magazine, No. IX.—February, 1851.—Vol. II. - Various - Страница 8

The city of Bordeaux possesses much that is interesting. Many historical associations are connected with it, from the time of its occupation by the Romans, downward. It was the birthplace of the Latin poet Ausonius, and also of the English Edward, the famous Black Prince; Montesquieu was born in its neighborhood, and Montaigne was once its mayor; the district of which it is the centre gave its name to the celebrated party of the Girondins. It enjoys very considerable trade. The country round it produces some of the best wines in France. Its quays and many of its streets are handsome and lively. The public buildings are not a little remarkable. In particular, we may cite the theatre, which, though surpassed by a few others in size, is unrivaled in modern Europe for the combination it presents of elegance, symmetry, and perfect adaptation to its purpose. The noble bridge, too, by which the Garonne – here nearly the third of a mile wide – is crossed, must not be forgotten either. When we consider the difficulties attending the work, or the success which has crowned it, the bridge is perhaps the greatest boast of Bordeaux, and it is not without reason that the pride of the Bordelais pronounces it unique.

But the most curious thing, in its way, which Bordeaux possesses, is a vault under St. Michael's church. That edifice itself presents but little worth notice, except its mutilated tower, which, with its spire, was once more than three hundred feet high, and was reduced to its present state by a gale of wind, the upper part of it being literally blown over. Finding so little, therefore, here to interest us, we are about to leave the church, when our guide asks if we would like to see the charnel-house of St. Andrew. The name strikes us; we accept the invitation and follow him, wondering what is before us. We descend a staircase, and exchange the pure air and bright sky of Guienne for the close and stone-smelling atmosphere of a subterraneous passage, and the darkness made visible by the uncertain lamp of our conductor. We arrive at a low doorway, and bend to pass beyond it. This is the place. At first we see nothing; our eyes, however, soon become accustomed to the obscurity, and a strange spectacle is disclosed to them. We find we are standing in a round and vaulted chamber of rough masonry: it resembles an inverted bowl, the spring of its arch being but a little above the floor; this floor is of uneven earth, and may be some twenty feet in diameter. Round the walls, and supported in a standing position, are a great number of human bodies. There are ninety in all. We are in a large company of the dead; and the ground on which we tread is composed of hundreds more, for that whitish dust is the dust of bones, and the original bottom of the pit is many feet below.

The fact is, as the guide informs us, that a cemetery near the church having been disturbed, the vault was made the receptacle of the remains found in it. As for the bodies piled round its sides, some peculiar property of the spot in which they were originally deposited had preserved them entire; and such as they now are they will probably remain, for some of them were living six hundred years ago. Their flesh has been transformed into a substance resembling tinder; the skin has much shrunk, and has become brown, so that they resemble very thin mulattoes, but, in most other respects, they are scarcely changed. Many of them still possess all their teeth; their hair remains – one has a long beard. The expression their countenances wore in death is still perfectly distinct. They are of both sexes and of all ages, and, consequently, of every size. The histories of a few are known. In the case of most, you can read something of their past lives in their faces and forms, as you can in those of the living, so completely does their physiognomy retain the impress of the passions which once moved and agitated them. One is the body of a man who was a street porter in his time: it is fully seven feet high. He was renowned for his strength, but broke his back one day about a hundred years back, under a burden too heavy for him. Another presents the features of a singularly beautiful and graceful woman who died of cancer. On a third body, you remark the nun's dress in which the poor inmate of the cloister was interred. Her face still wears a look of sadness and melancholy resignation. You see in the breast of one man the sword-thrust wound which had caused his death. The most painful to behold is the body of a young boy, the convulsed contraction of whose features and members presents a frightful appearance of moral as well as of physical agony. Some medical men have given it as their opinion that this unhappy being had been buried alive, and that it was in his frenzied efforts to burst his cerements that his limbs stiffened into their present horrid aspect. Speaking of medical men, there is one of their fraternity in the collection, an old doctor, who thus shares the tomb, it may be, of some of those whom he, perhaps, helped to send to it.

Such are the mummies of Bordeaux. As to the cause of the phenomenon, we can offer no explanation, though more learned men than we will, doubtless, easily find many. We trust, however, that such may be more reasonable than that offered by an author before us, who ascribes the preservation of the bodies to the heat of the climate. The guide, of course, has his own theory. A baker had his oven close to the place in which they were at first interred, and the heat of the said oven petrified them. But, whatever may be the proper solution of the question, St. Michael's church at Bordeaux is not the only locality which possesses such a curiosity, though none that we are aware of can boast a museum so complete. Similar discoveries are said to have been made at Toulouse, under a Franciscan, and also under a Dominican monastery, but we must say that, when in that town, we never heard of them. We have, however, ourselves seen the bodies preserved in a crypt of the cathedral church of Bremen. This crypt is called the Bleikeller, or lead-cellar, for what precise reason we do not remember. It is not entirely underground, but enjoys a certain dubious daylight. The mummies here are contained in rough wooden coffins, and are attired in the usual vestments of the dead, but with their faces exposed. Each has its history, which the respectable lady who showed them to us duly recounted, removing each coffin-lid as she did so, and replacing it as she passed to another. As at Bordeaux, one of them had been slain by the sword; he was a student who fell in a duel. Another was the body of an English lady of the name of Stanhope. If we bore that name, we should take measures to prevent her remains being thus made a show of.

Since we are speaking of Bremen, we may mention another object, of a somewhat similar kind, which that town possesses. Gesche Gottfried was a female prisoner, a modern Brinvilliers. She poisoned her husband (two husbands, unless we are mistaken), some of her children, and several of her friends and relatives. At last, in an attempt to poison a young man, to whom she was about to be married, she was detected, condemned, and decapitated. This was a few years back, and they have now got her head, preserved in spirits, in the Bremen Museum.