The glacier land Author:Alexandre Dumas Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: THE GLACIEE LAND. MONTEREAU. Next day, while the coach stopped at Montereau for the passengers to breakfast, I proceeded to visit the bridge, twice celebra... more »ted in history, as having, within an interval of four centuries, witnessed the agony of two dynasties; one of which was saved by a crime, and the other could not be saved even by a victory. These two pages of history are important enough to deserve a record. Let us cast a glance, therefore, at the topography of Montereau, the better to comprehend the events in which John the Bold and Napoleon played the principal parts. The town of Montereau is situated about twenty - leagues from Paris, at the confluence of the Yonne and Seine, where the former loses its distinctive name and becomes absorbed in the latter. To the left rises the mountain of Surville, crowned by the ruins of an old chateau, while at the base lies a kind of suburb, separated from the town by a river. In front, a wedge-shaped tongue of land extends between the two streams, and to the right lies the graceful city, amid its houses and vineyards, whose green and yellow trellises extend, like a rich Scotch mantle, far away out of sight over the verdant plains of Gatinais. The bridge which has attained such historical importance joins the suburb to the town, spanning the two streams, and resting one of its massive feet upon the point of land above mentioned.CHAPTER I. JOHN THE BOLD. On the 9th of September, 1419, two men might have been observed on that portion of the bridge that spans the Yonne, engaged attentively in watching the proceedings of some workmen, who, guarded by military, to prevent the approach of -the populace, were rapidly erecting a kind of wooden pavilion, that extended across the entire breadth of the bridge, and for twenty feet or ...« less