is, and ever was, unusual.  Each of them performed her devotions in a kind of inclosed bench or solitary pew.  By most of these the occupant was concealed only to the waist when she stood up at the reading of the Gospel; some allowed only their heads to appear; and others of the fair owners were at once so devout, so cruel, and so self-denying as to shut out the eyes of the world entirely and at all times.  But instances of this remorseless mortification of the flesh, seem to have been exceedingly rare.  Queer enough these structures were, and sufficiently gratifying to the pride and provocative of the envy which the beauties of Bale (avowedly) went to churches in which there was no marble to mortify.  For they were of different heights, according to the rank of the occupant.  A simple burgher’s wife took but a step toward heaven when she went to pray; a magistrate’s of the lower house, we must suppose, took two; a magistrate’s of the upper house, three; a lady, four; a baroness, five; a countess, six; and what a duchess, if one ever appeared there, did to maintain her dignity in the eyes of God and man, unless she mounted into the pulpit, it is quite impossible to conjecture.  Aeneas Sylvius gives it as his opinion that these things were used as a protection against the cold, which to his Italian blood seemed very great.  But that notion was surely instilled into the courtly churchman by some fair, demure Baloise; for had it been well-founded, the sentry-boxes would have risen and fallen with the thermometer, and not with the rank of the occupant.

The walls of the churches were hung around with the emblazoned shields of knights and noblemen, and the roofs were richly painted in various colors, and glowed with splendor when the rays of the sun fell upon them.  Storks built their nests upon these roofs, and hatched their young there unmolested; for the Balois believed, that, if the birds were disturbed, they would fire the houses.

The dwellings of men of any wealth or rank were very curiously planned, elaborately ornamented, richly painted, and adorned with magnificent tapestry.  The tables were covered with vessels of wrought silver, in which Sylvius confesses that the Balois surpassed even the skilful and profuse Italians.  Fountains, those sources of fantastic and ever-changing beauty, were numerous,—­so numerous, says our afterward-to-be-infallible authority, that the town of Viterbo, in Tuscany, had not so many,—­and Viterbo was noted for its beauty, and for being surrounded with the villas of wealthy Italians, who have always used water freely in the way of fountains.

Bale, although it then—­four hundred and twenty years ago—­acknowledged the Emperor for its sovereign, was a free town, as it is now; that is, it had no local lord to favor or oppress it at his pleasure, but was governed by laws enacted by representatives of the people.  The spirit of a noble independence pervaded the little Canton of which it was and is the capital.  Though it was fortified, its stone defences were not strong; but when Sylvius tells us that the Balois thought that the strength of their city consisted in the union of its inhabitants, who preferred death to loss of liberty, we see what stuff its men were made of, and why the town was free.