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Updated: August 16, 2024
Beaumont is composed of two villages, completely separated and quite distinct one from the other Beaumont-l'Eglise, on the hill with its old Cathedral of the twelfth century, its Bishop's Palace which dates only from the seventeenth century, its inhabitants, scarcely one thousand in number, who are crowded together in an almost stifling way in its narrow streets; and Beaumont-la-Ville, at the foot of the hill, on the banks of the Ligneul, an ancient suburb, which the success of its manufactories of lace and fine cambric has enriched and enlarged to such an extent that it has a population of nearly ten thousand persons, several public squares, and an elegant sub-prefecture built in the modern style.
She, alas! died in the early days of December, and confided to her sister-in-law the little girl, who since that time had been injured, beaten, and, in short, suffered martyrdom. "The Rabiers?" said Hubert. "The Rabiers? Yes, yes! They are tanners on the banks of the Ligneul, in the lower town. The husband is lame, and the wife is a noted scold."
The freedom of Beaumont was put in constant peril by the Chateau, and there were continual hostilities on the questions of tribute and of precedence. One especially, the right of paying toll, which the nobles demanded for the navigation of the Ligneul, perpetuated the quarrels.
It came from the garden of the Bishop, through a species of floodgate left at the foot of the wall, and at the other end it disappeared under an arched vault at the corner of the Hotel Voincourt, where it was swallowed up in the earth, to reappear two hundred yards farther on, as it passed along the whole length of the Rue Basse to the Ligneul, into which it emptied itself.
At Whitsuntide, this year, the Huberts had taken Angelique with them to lunch at the ruins of the Chateau d'Hautecoeur, which overlooks the Ligneul, two leagues below Beaumont; and, after the day spent in running and laughing in the open air, the young girl still slept when, the next morning, the old house-clock struck eight. Hubertine was obliged to go up and rap at her door. "Ah, well!
She was mistaken, for it was only half-past six, and the procession never came back before a quarter-past seven. She should have known well, had she not been over-impatient, that the canopy must be only at the lower wharf of the Ligneul. But she was too excited to think. "Oh! mother dear! do hurry, or we may not find any places."
The air of meditation was profound, as if the old town had become simply a continuation of the Cathedral; the only sound of carriages that could be heard came up from Beaumont-la-Ville, the new town on the banks of the Ligneul, where many of the factories were not closed, as the proprietors disdained taking part in this ancient religious ceremony.
An archbishop, Severin, in the early years of the tenth century, had erected at Hautecoeur a fortress to defend the country against the Normans, who were coming up the river Oise, into which the Ligneul flows.
So she talked of their setting out upon their expedition, of the beautiful fields they crossed, of their lunch over there in the ruins of Hautecoeur, upon the flagstones of a little room whose tumble-down walls towered far above the Ligneul, which rolled gently among the willows fifty yards below them.
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