Lessons for the Day (Volume 2)

Book may have numerous typos, missing text, images, or index. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. 1883. Excerpt: ... UNSCIENTIFIC PUNISHMENTS. IN the ancient town of Chinon in France, I went over the old church of St. Mexme, afterwards over the palatial castle, and the prison attached to it, with its dungeon and oubliette. The oubliette is a sort of bottomless pit into which certain prisoners were thrown, too deep for their cries to be heard, and there left to perish and be forgotten; hence called oubliette, place of forgetfulness. Six successive monarchs of France occupied this magnificent palace, with their courtiers, lords and ladies, and utilized this prison for the people they disliked. I was struck with the nice balance and adjustment between the palace and the prison. In the palace there were rooms for servants, for people of moderate importance, and more splendid apartments for exalted personages and favourites. In the prison there were rooms for keepers, guards, rooms for moderate offenders, cachets or dungeons for the worse, oubliette for the worst. I was impressed by the feeling that I had seen it all portrayed somewhere, and then remembered that it was in St. Mexme Church, in a mural painting there. This was a large picture, covering the wall, representing Heaven, Purgatory, and Hell, with Christ in the centre, directing the division between sheep and goats. It is a pidture of peculiar interest, because it was painted while Louis XI. sat on the throne, and his face appears in that of the judicial Jesus. The saints in glory around him are also, in some cases, portraits of his favourites, male and female. Beneath his feet, on the right, some are in a murky purgatory: on the left, souls tortured by devils. The chief devil may correspond to Louis's cruel agent called Oliver le Diable, who was finally executed himself. Louis XI. was the most powerful monarch who ever reigned in that place; ...