Page:Life and Times of Frederick Douglass (1892).djvu/692

684 subject to this rule. As you see them in one part of the country so you see them in another.

Dijon, so closely associated with the names of Bossuet and St. Bernard, the center, also, of the finest vineyards and the finest wines in France, and the ancient seat of the great dukes of Burgundy, traces of whose wealth and power are still visible in what remains of the ducal palace and the ancient castle, whose walls when a prison inclosed the restless Mirabeau, takes a deep hold upon the interest of the traveler. Its venerable and picturesque churches, in a chapel of one of which is a black image of the Virgin Mary about which one might philosophize, leave upon the mind: an impression very different from the one felt on reaching Lyons, that center of the greatest silk industry in France. The main feature of our interest in the latter town, aside from its historical associations, was the Heights of Fourvières, from which one of the grandest views of the surrounding country can in clear weather be had. We were conducted to this immense height by a kind-hearted woman who seemed to know at once that we were strangers and in need of a guide. She volunteered to serve without promise of reward. She would not touch a penny for her service. She was evidently a good Catholic, and her kindness made even more impression upon us than the sonorous bells of her city. We saw in Lyons, too, a grand French military display, twenty thousand men in procession, rank upon rank with their glittering steel and splendid uniform, with all the pomp and circumstance of glorious war, a spectacle at once brilliant and sad to behold. Soldiers and slaughter go together.

Avignon, more than seventy years the home of the popes and the scene of pontifical magnificence, powerfully impresses the mind. Five ecclesiastical