[Ice-Caves of France and Switzerland by George Forrest Browne]@TWC D-Link bookIce-Caves of France and Switzerland CHAPTER V 5/29
A village sprang up near the outlet thus made, and took thence its name Percee, or, as men now spell it, Parcey; and the rich vegetation which speedily covered the valley, where once the lake had been, gave it such an air of happiness and beauty, that the people remembered its origin, and called it the Valley of Love.
It is a fact that Parcy was not always so spelled, for Noble Constantin Thiehault, Sieur de Perrecey, was a witness to the treaty for the transference of a miraculous host from Faverney to Dole in 1608, and old maps and books give it as Perrecey and Parrecey indifferently.
The De Chisseys, whose names may be found among the female prebends of Chateau-Chalon, with its necessary sixteen quarters, filled a considerable place in the history of the Comte from the Crusades downwards, and known as _les Fols de Chissey_, the brave[29] and dashing, and witty De Chisseys--qualities which no doubt were possessed by the poor young man for whom the fair Chatelaine drained the Val d'Amour. As we drew nearer to Besancon, each turn of the small streams, and each low rounded hill, might have served as an illustration to Caesar's 'Commentaries.' Now at length it was seen how, whatever the result of a battle, there was always a _proximus collis_ for the conquered party to retire to; and it would have been easy to find many suitable scenes for the critical engagement, where the woods sloped down to a strip of grass-land between their foot and the stream. The Frenchman knew his Caesar, but he put that general in the fourth century B.C.He made mistakes, too, in quoting him, which were easily detected by a memory bristling with the details of his phraseology, the indelible result of extracting the principal parts of his verbs, and the nominatives of his irregular nouns, from half a dozen generations of small boys.
He promised me a rich Julian feast in Besancon, and was greatly affected when he found that the Englishman could give him Caesar's description of his native town.
He wholly denied the amphitheatre with which one of our handbooks has gifted it; and this denial was afterwards echoed by every one in Besancon, some even thinking it necessary to explain the difference between an amphitheatre and an arch of triumph, the latter still existing in the town.
<<Back Index Next>> D-Link book Top TWC mobile books
|