The citadel is the great sight of Besancon, and the polite Colonel-commandant attends at his office at convenient hours to give passes.  What it might be to storm the position under the excitement of the sport of war, I cannot say; but certainly it is a most trying affair on a hot Sunday’s afternoon, even when all is made smooth, and the gates are opened, by a comprehensive pass.  The wall mentioned by Caesar as a great feature of the place cut the site of the citadel off from the town, and many signs of it were found when the cathedral of S. Stephen was built, the unfortunate church which went down before the exigencies of a siege under Louis XIV.  The barrack-master proved to be a most interesting man, knowing many details of Caesar’s life and campaigns which I suspect were not known to that captain himself.  He had served in Algeria, and assented to the proposition that more soldiers died there of absinthe than of Arabs, stating his conviction that three-fourths of the whole deaths are caused by that pernicious extract of wormwood, and that he ought himself to have died of it long ago.  He pointed out the difference between the massive masonry of the period of the Spanish occupation and the less impressive work of more recent times, and showed the dungeon from which Marshal Bourmont bought his escape, in the time of the first Napoleon.

The floor of one of the little look-out towers is composed of a tombstone, representing a priest in full ecclesiastical dress, and my question as to how it came there elicited the following story:—­When Louis XIV. was besieging the citadel, he placed his head-quarters, and a strong battery, on the summit of the Mont Chaudane,[42] which commands the citadel on one side as the Bregille does on the other.  Among the besieged was a monk named Schmidt, probably one of the Low-country men to whom the Franche Comte was then a sort of home, as forming part of the dominions of Spain; and this monk was the most active supporter of the defence, against the large party within the walls which was anxious to render the town.  He was also an admirable shot; and on one of the last days of the siege, as he stood in the little tower where the tombstone now lies, the King and his staff rode to the front of the plateau on the Mont Chaudane to survey the citadel; whereupon some one pointed out to Schmidt that now he had a fair chance of putting an end at once to the siege and the invasion.  Accordingly, he took a musket from a soldier and aimed at the King; but before firing he changed his aim, remarking, that he, a priest, ought not to destroy the life of a man, and so he only killed the horse, giving the Majesty of France a roll in the mud.  When the town was taken, the King enquired for the man who killed his horse, and asked the priest whether he could have killed the rider instead, had he wished to do so.  ‘Certainly,’ Schmidt replied, and related the facts of the case.  Louis informed him, that had he been a soldier, he should have been decorated for his skill and his impulse of mercy; but, being a priest, he should be hung.  The sentence was carried out, and the priest’s body was buried in the floor of the tower from which he had spared the King’s life.  If this be true, it was one of the most unkingly deeds ever done.[43]