I take the railway from Bourg to La Cluse, a mile from the town, and a
marvellous piece of railway engineering is this short journey, veritable
Alpine ascent in a railway-carriage, scaling perpendicular mountain
sides by means of the steam-engine! The train curls round the mountain
as the Jura roads are made to do, high above an awful gorge, in the
midst of which runs the River Ain, emerald-green irradiated by
diamond-like flashes of cascade and torrent. When we have accomplished
this aerial bit of travel--it is very like being up in a balloon--we
suddenly lose alike mountain, river, and ravine, all the world of
enchantment in which I had been living for weeks past, to find ourselves
in the region of prose and common-place! In other words, we were in the
wide, highly cultivated plain of La Bresse. At Bourg-en-Bresse I halted,
as everyone else must do, in order to see its famous Church of Brou. The
Church was built in consequence of a vow made by Margaret of Burgundy,
that if her husband, Philibert the Second, Duke of Savoy, was healed
from injuries received in the hunt, she would erect a church and found a
monastery of the Order of St. Benoit. The Duke recovered, but his wife
died before accomplishing her work, which was, however, carried out by
her daughter-in-law, Margaret of Austria, wife of Philibert le Beau.
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