A CATHOLIC PRIEST.

597

tation on such a matter was not the precise point on which he was most desirous of standing clear with us. His conversation was interlarded with scraps of Monkish Latin, sometimes mystical, sometimes bordering on indecorum-and when our English pronunciation of the vowels was spoken of as being different from that of the rest of Europe, he accounted for it with a chuckling smile-" Ah, that was only a trick of the Reformers-before their time you pronounced them like other people; but they wished to keep the common people in the dark, and so they altered the sound of the vowels, that they might not understand their own language!" I could not help smiling at the worthy Catholic's satisfacfaction, with his whimsical theory, so strictly borrowed from the tactics of his own church.

Our Reverend guide left us to prepare for the salut-but anxious that we should have a good view of the little image of our Saviour, used at the service, which he assured us was solid gold, he placed us in a corner of the choir opposite the altar, promising when he held it up to the congregation, to hold it before us long enough to

insure a full inspection. When he marched solemnly up to the altar, with the two other Priests, he turned his eye to the appointed rendezvous and recognised us with a familiar nod and wink. His occupation in his sacred office did not make him forget his promise; and when the organ was sounding, the bells ringing, the incense fuming, and the priest held up the image to the gazing multitude, with an air of fervent piety, he turned it round to us, and held it for some seconds, eyeing us with a look that meant to ask what we thought of it. The image was small, and what such images usually are, except that it was of solid gold-but the manner in which the priest thus mixed up his office of ciceroni with his holy functions struck us as very curious. While the admiring crowds thought him wrapt in the solemnity of his office, he was making an arrangement for the gratification of a traveller's curiosity with the hope of increasing his fee a few francs by his zeal. Lest we might not be at home in the etiquette of accompanying our douceurs with the phrase pour les pauvres," which the delicacy of a Catholic

7

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AIX-LA-CHAPelle.

599

Priest cannot resist, our shrewd friend gave us some very explicit hints-" Pour moi tout ce que je fais, c'est pour les pauvres-vous savez bien-il faut absolument soigner les pauvres-nous en avons tant." These hints were not lost upon us; and when we pressed a few francs into his hand, we did not omit the talismanic words which enabled him to receive our money with as unembarrassed a dignity as if he had literally intended every sou pour les pauvres.

The lofty Hotel de Ville, with its antique minarets, and its roof studded with diminutive windows, crowns with a venerable dignity the Grande Place of the town-a bustling square, adorned by an immense bronze basin and fountain in the centre, surmounted by an antique bronze statue of Charlemagne, fully accoutred. Two large black eagles flap their metal wings on pedestals by side of the fountain. The Monarch and the eagles turn their heads towards the Hotel de Ville-the ancient palace in which Charles was born. The statue was honoured by the French with a visit to Paris, among the other works of

art.

The modern Prussian eagle now

figures over the door of the hotel, announcing the Police and Municipal Offices of the Prussian Regency, and perking his upstart head in the face of the venerable birds who have reigned for centuries. We entered the hotel by a spacious hall, with vaulted roofs, and grotesquely carved and painted walls. A wide stair-case conducted us to the Grand Saloon, where the memorable Congress was held which concluded the peace of Aix-la-Chapelle in 1748. An immense well-executed picture represents the whole corps diplomatique, with their secretaries in full costume, at the deliberative table, to the number of about thirty. Le Chevalier Robinson, meaning Sir Thomas Robinson, and Lord Sandwich, were pointed out to us as our plenipotentiaries; and Maria Theresa's famous minister, the Prince of Kaunitz, as that of Austria. The separate portraits of the different ambassadors also adorn the room : but that of the French ambassador is singularly enough absent, Louis XV. having, as it is said, absolutely declined to furnish it, in consequence of his dissatisfaction at The arms of the different king

the

peace.

CONGRESS SALOON.

601

doms are represented on a small shield attached to the costume of each ambassador: but the fleur de lis, the emblem of the Bourbons, and which is common to the arms of England, France, Spain, and other Sovereigns, has been invariably erased, with great care, by the revolutionary French, and a black daub left in its place—a curious instance of the trifles to which political feeling often attaches importance. Handsome portraits of Maria Theresa, and her husband Francis, and Joseph II., also hang on the walls, once their own, but now dirty and neglected-while a glittering full length representation of his Prussian Majesty, protected by a green silk curtain, occupies one end of the saloon in all the blooming dignity of a Sovereign in pos

session.

As is naturally often the case in towns on frontiers, or which have been subject to changes of masters, the people of Aixla-Chapelle speak many languages, and none well. At Cologne they speak simply a coarse vulgar German, which degenerates in approaching the flats of Holland : but at Achen, bad German, bad French,