“A good joke for Desroches!” cried Joseph. “Well, if we can make nothing of it, I will ask him to go himself.”
“Do not let us rack our brains for nothing,” said Agathe. “When we are there, my godmother will advise us.”
This conversation, held at the moment when, after changing coach at Orléans, Madame Bridau and Joseph were entering the district of Sologne, sufficiently betrays the incapacity of both the artist and his mother to play the part the terrible attorney had assigned to them.
But on returning to Issoudun after an absence of thirty years, Agathe found the manners of the place so altered, that a slight sketch of the life of the town is indispensable. Without such a picture, it would be difficult to understand Madame Hochon’s real heroism in trying to help her goddaughter, or Jean-Jacques Rouget’s extraordinary position.
Though the doctor had made his son regard Agathe as a stranger, still, in a brother, there was something rather extraordinary in living for thirty years without giving his sister any sign of his existence. This silence must evidently have its cause in some unusual circumstances which any relations but Agathe and Joseph would long since have insisted on knowing. And, in fact, there was a certain connection between the state of the town and the Bridaus’ concerns, which will come to light in the course of this narrative.
With all due respect to Paris, Issoudun is one of the oldest towns in France. Notwithstanding historical prejudice, which insists on regarding the Emperor Probus as the Noah of Gaul, Caesar writes of the fine wine of Champ-Fort (de Campo Forti), one of the finest vintages of Issoudun. Rigord mentions the town in terms which allow of no doubt as to its large population and extensive commerce. Still, these two authorities would give Issoudun a moderate antiquity in comparison with its really immense age. Excavations, lately made by a learned archaeologist of the town, Monsieur Armand Pérémet, have led to the discovery of a basilica of the fifth century—probably the only example in France—under the famous tower of Issoudun. This church preserves in the materials of which it is built the record of a previous civilization; for the stones are those of a Roman temple of earlier date. And, indeed, the researches of this antiquary show that Issoudun, like all French towns of which the name, ancient or modern, ends in dun = dunum, contains in its name a certificate of native origin. The syllable dun, attaching to every hill consecrated to the religion of the Druids, shows it to have been a Celtic military and religious centre. The Romans then may have built at the foot of the Dun of the Gauls a temple to Isis; hence, according to Chaumon, the name of the town, Is-sous-dun (Is[is]-under-hill)—Is’ being an abbreviated form of Isis.
Richard Coeur de Lion undoubtedly built the famous tower, where he coined money, over a basilica of the fifth century, the third sanctuary of the third religion of this ancient city. He made use of the church as a base which he needed to add to the height of his ramparts, and preserved it by covering it with his feudal fortifications as with a cloak. Issoudun next became the seat of the transient authority of the Routiers and Cottereaux, bands of brigands with which Henri II opposed his son Richard when he rebelled as Count of Poitou. The history of Aquitaine, not having been written by the Benedictines, will now probably never be written, as there are no more Benedictines. Hence it is well to throw every possible light on these archaeological obscurities whenever an opportunity offers.
There is still further evidence of the ancient importance of Issoudun in the use made of the little Tournemine river, which has been raised for a considerable distance on an aqueduct several yards above the natural level of the Théols, the stream that encircles the town. This work is, beyond question, due to Roman engineers. Finally, the quarter lying to the north of the castle is intersected by a road known for two thousand years as the Rue de Rome; and the inhabitants of the suburb, who are certainly of a quite distinct type in race, blood, and features, call themselves the direct descendants of the Romans. They are almost all vinedressers, and singularly stern in their manners, owing, perhaps, to their origin, and perhaps also to their triumph over the Cottereaux and Rentiers, whom they exterminated in the twelfth century in the plain of Charost.
After the outbreak in 1830, France was too much agitated to pay any attention to the rebellion among the vine-growers of Issoudun, which was very serious, though the details were never published, and for very good reasons. In the first place, the citizens of Issoudun would not allow any troops to enter the city. They chose to be responsible for it themselves, after the usage and traditions of the citizen-class in the Middle Ages. The authorities were forced to succumb to a populace supported by six of seven thousand vinedressers, who had burnt all the archives and the tax-offices, and who went from street to street, dragging about an excise officer of the octroi, saying at each lamp-chain, “This is the place to hang him.”—The unhappy man was delivered from these wretches by the National Guard, who saved his life by taking him to prison on the pretext of trying him. The General of the forces only got in by coming to terms with the vinedressers, and it needed some courage to walk through the mob; for as soon as he appeared outside the Town-hall a man of the Roman suburb put his pruning scythe—a large curved knife at the
