and the blow thus struck, by an unhappy accident, at his designs against
the emperor, that he put himself to death at the gates of the town,
while the fight was still going on.[31] The Bisuntians claim to
themselves the glory acquired by the Sequani, whose chief city Vesontio
was, by the overthrow of Julius Sabinus, who asserted that he was the
grandson of a son of Julius Cæsar, and proclaimed himself emperor in
the time of Vespasian. The Sequani proceeded against him of their own
accord, and conquered him in the interest of the reigning emperor; and
he and his wife Peponilla lived hid in a tomb for nine years. Here two
sons were born to them; and when they were all discovered and carried to
Rome, Peponilla prettily told the emperor that she had brought up two
sons in the tomb, in order that there might be other voices to intercede
for her husband's life besides her own. They were, however, put to
death.[32]

To judge from the style of the hotels, Besançon is not visited by many
English travellers; and yet it well repays a visit, providing those who
care for such things with a full average of vaulted passages, and feudal
gateways, and arcaded court-yards, with much less than the average of
evil smell. There are gates of all shapes and times--Louis-Quatorze
towers, and fortifications specially constructed under Vauban's own eye;
while the approach to the town, from the land side, is by a tunnel, cut
through the live rock which forms a solid chord to the arc described by
the course of the river Doubs. This excavation, called appropriately the
_Porte Taillée_, is attributed by the various inhabitants to pretty
nearly all the famous emperors and kings who have lived from Julius
Cæsar to Louis XIV.: it owes its origin, no doubt, to the construction
of the aqueduct which formerly brought into the town the waters pouring
out of the rock at Arcier, two leagues from Besançon, and was the work
probably of M. Aurelius and L. Verus. Local antiquaries assign the