Besides the cathedral, there is at Vienne a very curious Saxon church, dedicated to St. Michel;[18] it has a stone ornament, running along the ridge of the roof, which seems not to be uncommon in these parts; the ornamental arches of the tower include nearly two-thirds of a circle; a circumstance which unites it with the Moresque architecture. The interior of the church is not beautiful, but a little cloister is very pretty, composed of arches, resting on little coupled columns.[19]
The churches of the villages down the Rhone are almost all of that style which we call in England, Saxon or Norman, very ancient and very rude. One at Bourg St. Andiole has an octagonal central tower, with semicircular arches, and is crowned with a spire of rather low proportions, rising immediately from the sides of the octagon, without cornice, or balustrade, or any thing to mark the line of separation.[20]
I have been so used in France to hear the pieces of twenty francs called _louis_, that I thought of nothing else when I made the agreement with a boatman at Vienne, to take us to Pont St. Esprit, full one hundred miles, for three louis; he used his oars very little, just enough to preserve a direction to the boat. When we were about to pay our waterman, he demanded seventy-two francs, instead of sixty; as we could not settle the matter, we all went to a magistrate, who acknowledged the ambiguity of the term, and decided that we should pay sixty-six francs, as a mean between the two methods of understanding the bargain. I do not know whether the man had any intention of cheating us. He had assured us on setting out that he must sell his boat at Pont St. Esprit to great disadvantage, since from the rapidity of the stream, it was impossible to bring it up the Rhone, and yet we found the boat on entering quite an old one. This had excited some suspicion of his honesty, because, if they could not be moved against the stream, we did not understand how they were to wear out at Vienne: but perhaps in this we were unjust. These boats cannot last long, as they are very slightly and poorly made, and the man only estimated the value at thirty-six francs.
The voyage down the Rhone is delightful; and I doubt if all the boasted beauties of the Rhine deserve to be compared with it. The scene is continually varying, but always beautiful; the river sometimes runs between lofty banks, always steep, generally rocky, sometimes precipitous. The hills are ornamented with villages, and with ruined castles without number, occupying the most picturesque situations; some are covered with sloping vineyards; in others little terraces are made for the vines among the rocks; some are crowned with forests, and everywhere the mixture of scattered trees and bushes gives richness to the landscape. In some places the bank of hill recedes from the river, or diminishes in height; at others it is entirely lost, and the eye wanders to more distant hills, to rugged mountains, or to the snow-covered summits of the Alps. Sometimes one of these styles of landscape is presented on one side, and another on the opposite shore; at others all appear to be united; add to which, the Rhone itself is a noble river, from a quarter to half a mile wide, rushing impetuously along, and giving life and spirit to the scene.