It is hard to know where to start. René of Chalon, Renaissance prince of Holland, was "imported" as you might say, to marry (and presumably breed with) the Princess Anne of Lorraine. Too bad so sad, they had lots of nasty battles in those days. So at the tender young age of 26, he was knighted in a hurry and sent off to fight in the battle of St. Dizier--they were kind of low on warriors so they REALLY rushed his knighthood ceremony. Like Danny Kaye in the Court Jester.
Anyway, poor sap got killed right off the bat. So far, so good. THEN, three years after his death, his presumably crazed-because-of-inbreeding widow called in a famous artist by the name of Ligier Richier to do a portrait of her deceased husband. Not from a picture, ohhhh no. From life. Or should I say death.
So, Mr. Richier digs up the mostly-decayed corpse, tweaks its tendons around to make it pose for him, and for a nice finishing touch he puts the guy's nasty withered old HEART in his left hand. Because oh yes, I shouldn't forget to tell you that it was the custom back then to bury the internal organs separately from the body, in jars.
And the end result of this nastiness is the town's artistic masterpiece, a statue called "The Transi" or "The Corpse."
They've enshrined it at the Cathedral of Notre Dame in the high village. They also dug up all the corpses of the dead Dukes of Bar and buried them under this statue, along with the hapless René fellow who I really feel quite sorry for. And/or scared of.
Here is Dustin, making a mockery of centuries of French tradition LOL
Speaking of the Dukes of Bar, we may have sort of seen one. As we were wandering through the High Village, right before running into Véronique & Co. for the fourth time in 24 hours, we saw a group of tourists being led around by a guide. So we hitched up with them to hear what the guide had to say.
He led us up to this classy-looking Renaissance villa and treated us to a spectacularly boring account of how the windows were decorated, then showed us into the carriage tunnel on the side of the house. This was a little confusing because the carriage tunnel was plastered with signs that said DO NOT ENTER. PRIVATE PROPERTY. I figured he must have special permission or something.
Well, I don't think he did...as we were standing there, blocking local traffic in a truly enraging manner, up comes this sexy European car with dark windows and a coat-of-arms on the hood. They were obviously trying to pull into their carriage tunnel, which in many cases serves modern inhabitants as a driveway.
The guide didn't move an inch or even acknowledge the car's presence. I'm beginning to realize that far from being sorry for chopping the heads off a bunch of aristocrats during the Revolution, most French citizens feel that they probably deserved it. In fact, the guide's entire lecture in the carriage tunnel was centered around how magnificent the peasants were and how dumb and worthless the "aristos" were. He went on and on about how maids and butlers were extremely talented people, who had to know how to cook, clean, sew, and do hair. He talked about how lazy and stupid the aristos were and claimed that they ate ten times a day while the people starved; that they were also exceedingly ugly and unintelligent, and basically that they deserved what they got in "the glorious Revolution."
And while the guide is dissing his ancestors, somebody in the black car is trying to get into his dang house which is full of people from Holland. Now I realize that this country may not have quite the same ideas about privacy as Americans, and that some of what the guide said about aristos was true...but seriously?
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