left
of the road had a charm, however; there is something picturesque in the
big, comfortable shoulders of the Cote. That delicate critic M. Emile
Montegut, in a charming record of travel through this region published
some years ago, praises Shakespeare for having talked (in "Lear") of
"waterish Burgundy." Vinous Burgundy would surely be more to the point.
I stopped at Beaune in pursuit of the picturesque, but I might almost
have seen the little I discovered without stopping. It is a drowsy
Burgundian town, very old and ripe, with crooked streets, vistas always
oblique, and steep, moss covered roofs. The principal lion is the
Hopital-Saint-Esprit, or the Hotel-Dieu simply, as they call it there,
founded in 1443 by Nicholas Rollin, Chancellor of Burgundy. It is
administered by the sisterhood of the Holy Ghost, and is one of the most
venerable and stately of hospitals. The face it presents to the street
is simple, but striking--a plain, windowless wall, surmounted by a vast
slate roof, of almost mountainous steepness. Astride this roof sits a
tall, slate-covered spire, from which, as I arrived, the prettiest
chimes I ever heard (worse luck to them, as I will presently explain)
were ringing. Over the door is a high, quaint canopy, without supports,
with its vault painted blue and covered with gilded stars. (This, and
indeed the whole building, have lately been restored, and its antiquity
is quite of the spick-and-span order. But it is very delightful.) The
treasure of the place is a precious picture--a Last Judgment, attributed
equally to John van Eyck and Roger van der Weyden--given to the hospital
in the fifteenth century by Nicholas Rollin aforesaid.

I learned, however, to my dismay, from a sympathising but inexorable
concierge, that what remained to me of the time I had to spend at
Beaune, between trains--I had rashly wasted half an hour of it in
breakfasting at the station--was the one hour of the day (that of the
dinner of the nuns; the picture is in their refectory) during which the
treasure could not be shown. The purpose of the musical chimes to which
I had so artlessly listened was to usher in this fruitless interval. The
regulation was absolute, and my disappointment relative, as I have been
happy to reflect since I "looked up" the picture. Crowe and Cavalcaselle
assign it without hesitation to Roger van der Weyden, and give a weak
little drawing of it in their "Flemish Painters." I learn from them
also--what