A LITTLE TOUR IN FRANCE [Illustration] Novels by HENRY JAMES _Six Shillings each_ THE AWKWARD AGE THE TWO MAGICS WHAT MAISIE KNEW THE OTHER HOUSE THE SPOILS OF POYNTON EMBARRASSMENTS TERMINATIONS LONDON: WILLIAM HEINEMANN 21 Bedford Street, W. C. [Illustration] A LITTLE TOUR IN FRANCE By HENRY JAMES [Illustration] WITH NINETY-FOUR ILLUSTRATIONS BY JOSEPH PENNELL LONDON WILLIAM HEINEMANN 1900 [Illustration] Preface _The notes presented in this volume were gathered, as will easily beperceived, a number of years ago and on an expectation not at that timeanswered by the event, and were then published in the United States. Theexpectation had been that they should accompany a series of drawings, and they themselves were altogether governed by the pictorial spirit. They made, and they make in appearing now, after a considerable intervaland for the first time, in England, no pretension to any other; they areimpressions, immediate, easy, and consciously limited; if the writtenword may ever play the part of brush or pencil, they are sketches on"drawing-paper" and nothing more. From the moment the principle ofselection and expression, with a tourist, is not the delight of the eyesand the play of fancy, it should be an energy in every way much larger;there is no happy mean, in other words, I hold, between the sense andthe quest of the picture, and the surrender to it, and the sense andthe quest of the constitution, the inner springs of the subject--springsand connections social, economic, historic. _ _One must really choose, in other words, between the benefits of theperception of surface--a perception, when fine, perhaps none of the mostfrequent--and those of the perception of very complex underlyingmatters. If these latter had had, for me, to be taken into account, mypages would not have been collected. At the time of their originalappearance the series of illustrations to which it had been their policyto cling for countenance and company failed them, after all, at the lastmoment, through a circumstance not now on record; and they had suddenlyto begin to live their little life without assistance. That they haveseemed able in any degree still to prolong even so modest a career mightperhaps have served as a reason for leaving them undisturbed. In fact, however, I have too much appreciated--for any renewal ofinconsistency--the opportunity of granting them at last, in anassociation with Mr. Pennell's admirable drawings, the benefit they havealways lacked. The little book thus goes forth finally as thepicture-book it was designed to be. Text and illustrations are, altogether and alike, things of the play of eye and hand andfancy--views, head-pieces, tail-pieces; through the artist's work, doubtless, in a much higher degree than the author's. _ _But these are words enough on a minor point. Many things come back tome on reading my pages over--such a world of reflection and emotion as Ican neither leave unmentioned nor yet, in this place, weigh them downwith the full expression of. Difficult indeed would be any fullexpression for one who, deeply devoted always to the revelations ofFrance, finds himself, late in life, making of the sentiment no moresubstantial, no more direct record than this mere revival of anaccident. Not one of these small chapters but suggests to me a regretthat I might not, first or last, have gone farther, penetrated deeper, spoken oftener--closed, in short, more intimately with the great generalsubject; and I mean, of course, not in such a form as the present, butin many another, possible and impossible. It all comes back, doubtless, this vision of missed occasions and delays overdone, to the generaltruth that the observer, the enjoyer, may, before he knows it, bepractically too far_ in _for all that free testimony and pleasant, easytalk that are incidental to the earlier or more detached stages of arelation. There are relations that soon get beyond all merely showyappearances of value for us. Their value becomes thus private andpractical, and is represented by the process--the quieter, mostly, thebetter--of absorption and assimilation of what the relation has done forus. For persons thus indebted to the genius of France--however, in itsinnumerable ways, manifested--the profit to be gained, the lesson to belearnt, is almost of itself occupation enough. They feel that they bearwitness by the intelligent use and application of their advantage, andthe consciousness of the artist is therefore readily a consciousness ofpious service. He may repeatedly have dreamt of some such happycombination of mood and moment as shall launch him in a profession offaith, a_ demonstration _of the interesting business; he may have hadinner glimpses of an explicit statement, and vaguely have sketched it tohimself as one of the most candid and charming ever drawn up; but time, meanwhile, has passed, interruptions have done their dismal work, theindirect tribute, too, has perhaps, behind the altar, grown and grown;and the reflection has at all events established itself that honour ismore rendered by seeing and doing one's work in the light than bybrandishing the torch on the house-tops. Curiosity and admiration haveoperated continually, but with as little waste as they could. Thedrawback is only that in this case, to be handsomely consequent, onewould perhaps rather not have appeared to celebrate_ any _rites. Themoral of all of which is that those here embodied must pass, at thebest, but for what they are worth. _ _H. J. _ _August 9, 1900. _ [Illustration] Contents CHAPTER PAGE Introductory 1 I. Tours 3 II. Tours: the Cathedral 12 III. Tours: Saint Martin 17 " Saint Julian 20 " Plessis-les-Tours 22 " Marmoutier 23 IV. Blois 26 V. Chambord 36 VI. Amboise 47 Chaumont 51 VII. Chenonceaux 54 VIII. Azay-le-Rideau 64 IX. Langeais 68 X. Loches 72 XI. Bourges 77 " The Cathedral 80 XII. Bourges: Jacques Coeur 86 XIII. Le Mans 94 XIV. Angers 101 XV. Nantes 107 XVI. La Rochelle 115 XVII. Poitiers 122 XVIII. Angoulême 130 Bordeaux 132 XIX. Toulouse 136 XX. Toulouse: the Capitol 141 XXI. Toulouse: Saint-Sernin 145 XXII. Carcassonne 150 XXIII. Carcassonne 157 XXIV. Narbonne 163 XXV. Montpellier 170 XXVI. The Pont du Gard 178 XXVII. Aigues-Mortes 183 XXVIII. Nîmes 188 XXIX. Tarascon 195 XXX. Arles 202 " The Theatre 205 XXXI. Arles: the Museum 209 XXXII. Les Baux 213 XXXIII. Avignon 223 " The Palace of the Popes 226 XXXIV. Villeneuve-lès-Avignon 230 XXXV. Vaucluse 235 XXXVI. Orange 243 XXXVII. Macon 249 XXXVIII. Bourg-en-Bresse 254 The Church at Brou 255 XXXIX. Beaune 262 XL. Dijon 267 [Illustration] [Illustration] List of Illustrations Nîmes: the Garden (_Photogravure_) _Frontispiece_ Tours: the House of Balzac _To face page_ 8 Tours: the Cathedral (_Photogravure_) " 14 Tours: the Towers of St. Martin " 18 Blois (_Photogravure_) " 26 Blois: the Château " 28 Chambord " 38 Amboise: the Château " 48 Chenonceaux (_Photogravure_) " 56 Azay-le-Rideau " 64 Loches " 72 Loches: the Church " 74 Bourges: the House of Jacques Coeur (_Photogravure_) " 86 Bourges: Doorway, House of Jacques Coeur " 90 Bourges: the Cathedral (West Front) " 92 Le Mans: the Cathedral " 98 Angers: Old Timbered Houses " 104 La Rochelle " 118 La Rochelle: the Hôtel de Ville (_Photogravure_) " 120 Poitiers: Church of St. Radegonde (_Photogravure_) " 126 Bordeaux: the Quay (_Photogravure_) _To face page_ 134 Toulouse: St. Sernin (the Transept) " 146 Toulouse: the Garonne (_Photogravure_) " 148 Carcassonne " 158 Carcassonne (another View) " 160 Narbonne: the Washing Place " 166 Narbonne: the Cathedral and Hôtel de Ville (_Photogravure_) " 168 The Pont du Gard " 180 Aigues-Mortes " 186 Nîmes: the Cathedral " 190 Nîmes: the Amphitheatre " 192 Tarascon: the Castle " 198 Arles: St. Trophimus " 204 Arles: Ruins of the Roman Theatre " 206 Arles: Door of St. Trophimus " 210 Arles: the Cloisters (_Photogravure_) " 212 Avignon: the Church " 226 Vaucluse: Ruins of Castle " 240 Orange: the Theatre " 246 Lyons " 250 Brou: the Church (_Photogravure_) " 256 Beaune: the Hospital " 264 Dijon " 266 Dijon: the Park " 268 Courtyard, House of Jacques Coeur _Half-title_ Angers from the Bridge _Title-page_ Aigues-Mortes v Isle-sur-Sorgues viii Saint-Bénazet: the Broken Bridge ix Villeneuve-lès-Avignon xi Narbonne: the Fish Market xii Avignon from Villeneuve xiii Toulouse: Hôtel d'Assézat xvi Nantes 1 Tours from the River 3 Langeais 3 Chaumont from the River 17 Blois 26 Chambord 36 Chaumont from the Bridge 47 Chenonceaux 54 Azay-le-Rideau 64 Langeais from the Loire 68 Loches 72 Bourges 77 Bourges: the Hôtel Lallemont 86 Le Mans 94 Angers: the Castle 101 Nantes: the Quay 107 La Rochelle: Tour de la Lanterne 115 Poitiers: the Cathedral 122 Bordeaux 130 Toulouse: the Cathedral 136 Toulouse: the Place de Capitol 141 Toulouse: Saint-Sernin 145 Carcassonne from the River 150 Carcassonne 157 Arles, Landscape near 163 Montpellier: the Aqueduct 170 The Pont du Gard 178 Aigues-Mortes 183 Nîmes: the Maison Carrée 188 Tarascon and Beaucaire 195 Provençal Landscape 202 Montmajeur 209 Les Baux 213 Villeneuve-lès-Avignon 218 Avignon 223 Vaucluse, Approach to 235 Orange: the Gateway 243 Valence 249 Macon 254 Macon: the Bridge 262 Beaune: the Hospital 267 [Illustration] Introductory Though the good city of Paris appears to be less in fashion than inother days with those representatives of our race--not always, perhaps, acknowledged as the soundest and stiffest--curious of foreignopportunity and addicted to foreign sojourns, it probably none the lessremains true that such frequentations of France as may be said still toflourish among us have as much as ever the wondrous capital, and thewondrous capital alone, for their object. The taste for Paris, at allevents, is--or perhaps I should say was, alluding as I do, I fear, to avanished order--a taste by itself; singularly little bound up, ofnecessity, with such an interest in the country at large as would beimplied by an equal devotion, in other countries, to other capitals. Putting aside the economic inducement, which may always operate, andlimiting the matter to the question of free choice, it is sufficientlystriking that the free chooser would have to be very fond of England toquarter himself in London, very fond of Germany to quarter himself inBerlin, very fond of America to quarter himself in New York. It had, onthe other hand, been a common reflection for the author of these lightpages that the fondness for France (throughout the company of strangersmore or less qualified) was oddly apt to feed only on such grounds forit as made shift to spread their surface between the Arc de Triomphe andthe Gymnase Theatre: as if there were no good things in the _doux pays_that could not be harvested in that field. It matters little how theassumption began to strike him as stupid, especially since he himselfhad doubtless equally shared in the guilt of it. The light pages inquestion are but the simple record of a small personal effort to shakeit off. He took, it must be confessed, no extraordinary measures; hemerely started, one rainy morning in mid-September, for the charminglittle city of Tours, where he felt that he might as immediately asanywhere else see it demonstrated that, though France might be Paris, Paris was by no means France. The beauty of the demonstration--quite asprompt as he could have desired--drew him considerably farther, and hismodest but eminently successful adventure begot, as aids to amusedremembrance, a few informal notes. [Illustration] Chapter i [Tours] I am ashamed to begin with saying that Touraine is the garden of France;that remark has long ago lost its bloom. The town of Tours, however, hassomething sweet and bright, which suggests that it is surrounded by aland of fruits. It is a very agreeable little city; few towns of itssize are more ripe, more complete, or, I should suppose, in betterhumour with themselves and less disposed to envy the responsibilities ofbigger places. It is truly the capital of its smiling province; a regionof easy abundance, of good living, of genial, comfortable, optimistic, rather indolent opinions. Balzac says in one of his tales that the realTourangeau will not make an effort, or displace himself even, to go insearch of a pleasure; and it is not difficult to understand the sourcesof this amiable cynicism. He must have a vague conviction that he canonly lose by almost any change. Fortune has been kind to him: he livesin a temperate, reasonable, sociable climate, on the banks of a riverwhich, it is true, sometimes floods the country around it, but of whichthe ravages appear to be so easily repaired that its aggressions mayperhaps be regarded (in a region where so many good things are certain)merely as an occasion for healthy suspense. He is surrounded by fine oldtraditions, religious, social, architectural, culinary; and he may havethe satisfaction of feeling that he is French to the core. No part ofhis admirable country is more characteristically national. Normandy isNormandy, Burgundy is Burgundy, Provence is Provence; but Touraine isessentially France. It is the land of Rabelais, of Descartes, of Balzac, of good books and good company, as well as good dinners and good houses. George Sand has somewhere a charming passage about the mildness, theconvenient quality, of the physical conditions of central France--"sonclimat souple et chaud, ses pluies abondantes et courtes. " In the autumnof 1882 the rains perhaps were less short than abundant; but when thedays were fine it was impossible that anything in the way of weathercould be more charming. The vineyards and orchards looked rich in thefresh, gay light; cultivation was everywhere, but everywhere it seemedto be easy. There was no visible poverty; thrift and success presentedthemselves as matters of good taste. The white caps of the womenglittered in the sunshine, and their well-made sabots clicked cheerfullyon the hard, clean roads. Touraine is a land of old châteaux, --a galleryof architectural specimens and of large hereditary properties. Thepeasantry have less of the luxury of ownership than in most other partsof France; though they have enough of it to give them quite their shareof that shrewdly conservative look which, in the little chaffering_place_ of the market-town, the stranger observes so often in thewrinkled brown masks that surmount the agricultural blouse. This is, moreover, the heart of the old French monarchy; and as that monarchy wassplendid and picturesque, a reflection of the splendour still glittersin the current of the Loire. Some of the most striking events of Frenchhistory have occurred on the banks of that river, and the soil it watersbloomed for a while with the flowering of the Renaissance. The Loiregives a great "style" to a landscape of which the features are not, asthe phrase is, prominent, and carries the eye to distances even morepoetic than the green horizons of Touraine. It is a very fitful stream, and is sometimes observed to run thin and expose all the crudities ofits channel--a great defect certainly in a river which is so muchdepended upon to give an air to the places it waters. But I speak of itas I saw it last; full, tranquil, powerful, bending in large slow curvesand sending back half the light of the sky. Nothing can be finer thanthe view of its course which you get from the battlements and terracesof Amboise. As I looked down on it from that elevation one lovely Sundaymorning, through a mild glitter of autumn sunshine, it seemed the verymodel of a generous, beneficent stream. The most charming part of Toursis naturally the shaded quay that overlooks it, and looks across too atthe friendly faubourg of Saint Symphorien and at the terraced heightswhich rise above this. Indeed, throughout Touraine it is half the charmof the Loire that you can travel beside it. The great dyke whichprotects it, or protects the country from it, from Blois to Angers, isan admirable road; and on the other side as well the highway constantlykeeps it company. A wide river, as you follow a wide road, is excellentcompany; it brightens and shortens the way. The inns at Tours are in another quarter, and one of them, which ismidway between the town and the station, is very good. It is worthmentioning for the fact that every one belonging to it isextraordinarily polite--so unnaturally polite as at first to excite yoursuspicion that the hotel has some hidden vice, so that the waiters andchambermaids are trying to pacify you in advance. There was one waiterin especial who was the most accomplished social being I have everencountered; from morning till night he kept up an inarticulate murmurof urbanity, like the hum of a spinning-top. I may add that I discoveredno dark secrets at the Hôtel de l'Univers; for it is not a secret to anytraveller to-day that the obligation to partake of a lukewarm dinner inan overheated room is as imperative as it is detestable. For the rest, at Tours there is a certain Rue Royale which has pretensions to themonumental; it was constructed a hundred years ago, and the houses, allalike, have on a moderate scale a pompous eighteenth-century look. Itconnects the Palais de Justice, the most important secular building inthe town, with the long bridge which spans the Loire--the spacious, solid bridge pronounced by Balzac, in "Le Curé de Tours, " "one of thefinest monuments of French architecture. " The Palais de Justice was theseat of the Government of Léon Gambetta in the autumn of 1870, after thedictator had been obliged to retire in his balloon from Paris and beforethe Assembly was constituted at Bordeaux. The Germans occupied Toursduring that terrible winter: it is astonishing, the number of placesthe Germans occupied. It is hardly too much to say that, wherever onegoes in certain parts of France, one encounters two great historicfacts: one is the Revolution; the other is the German invasion. Thetraces of the Revolution remain in a hundred scars and bruises andmutilations, but the visible marks of the war of 1870 have passed away. The country is so rich, so living, that she has been able to dress herwounds, to hold up her head, to smile again, so that the shadow of thatdarkness has ceased to rest upon her. But what you do not see you stillmay hear; and one remembers with a certain shudder that only a few shortyears ago this province, so intimately French, was under the heel of aforeign foe. To be intimately French was apparently not a safeguard; forso successful an invader it could only be a challenge. Peace and plenty, however, have succeeded that episode; and among the gardens andvineyards of Touraine it seems only a legend the more in a country oflegends. It was not, all the same, for the sake of this chequered story that Imentioned the Palais de Justice and the Rue Royale. The most interestingfact, to my mind, about the high-street of Tours was that as you walktoward the bridge on the right hand _trottoir_ you can look up at thehouse, on the other side of the way, in which Honoré de Balzac first sawthe light. That violent and complicated genius was a child of thegood-humoured and succulent Touraine. There is something anomalous inthis fact, though, if one thinks about it a little, one may discovercertain correspondences between his character and that of his nativeprovince. Strenuous, laborious, constantly infelicitous in spite of hisgreat successes, he suggests at times a very different set ofinfluences. But he had his jovial, full-feeding side--the side thatcomes out in the "Contes Drolatiques, " which are the romantic andepicurean chronicle of the old manors and abbeys of this region. And hewas, moreover, the product of a soil into which a great deal of historyhad been trodden. Balzac was genuinely as well as affectedlymonarchical, and he was saturated with a sense of the past. Number 39Rue Royale--of which the basement, like all the basements in the RueRoyale, is occupied by a shop--is not shown to the public; and I knownot whether tradition designates the chamber in which the author of "LeLys dans la Vallée" opened his eyes into a world in which he was to seeand to imagine such extraordinary things. If this were the case I wouldwillingly have crossed its threshold; not for the sake of any relic ofthe great novelist which it may possibly contain, nor even for that ofany mystic virtue which may be supposed to reside within its walls, butsimply because to look at those four modest walls can hardly fail togive one a strong impression of the force of human endeavour. Balzac, inthe maturity of his vision, took in more of human life than any one, since Shakspeare, who has attempted to tell us stories about it; and thevery small scene on which his consciousness dawned is one end of theimmense scale that he traversed. I confess it shocked me a little tofind that he was born in a house "in a row"--a house, moreover, which atthe date of his birth must have been only about twenty years old. Allthat is contradictory. If the tenement selected for this honour couldnot be ancient and embrowned, it should at least have been detached. There is a charming description in his little tale of "La Grenadière" ofthe view of the opposite side of [Illustration: TOURS--THE HOUSE OF BALZAC] the Loire as you have it from the square at the end of the Rue Royale--asquare that has some pretensions to grandeur, overlooked as it is by theHôtel de Ville and the Musée, a pair of edifices which directlycontemplate the river, and ornamented with marble images of FrançoisRabelais and René Descartes. The former, erected a few years since, is avery honourable production; the pedestal of the latter could, as amatter of course, only be inscribed with the _Cogito ergo Sum_. The twostatues mark the two opposite poles to which the wondrous French mindhas travelled; and if there were an effigy of Balzac at Tours it oughtto stand midway between them. Not that he by any means always struck thehappy mean between the sensible and the metaphysical; but one may say ofhim that half of his genius looks in one direction and half in theother. The side that turns toward François Rabelais would be, on thewhole, the side that takes the sun. But there is no statue of Balzac atTours; there is only in one of the chambers of the melancholy museum arather clever, coarse bust. The description in "La Grenadière" of whichI just spoke is too long to quote; neither have I space for anyone ofthe brilliant attempts at landscape-painting which are woven into theshimmering texture of "Le Lys dans la Vallée. " The little manor ofClochegourde, the residence of Madame de Mortsauf, the heroine of thatextraordinary work, was within a moderate walk of Tours, and the picturein the novel is presumably a copy from an original which it would bepossible to-day to discover. I did not, however, even make the attempt. There are so many châteaux in Touraine commemorated in history that itwould take one too far to look up those which have been commemorated infiction. The most I did was to endeavour to identify the formerresidence of Mademoiselle Gamard, the sinister old maid of "Le Curé deTours. " This terrible woman occupied a small house in the rear of thecathedral, where I spent a whole morning in wondering rather stupidlywhich house it could be. To reach the cathedral from the little _place_where we stopped just now to look across at the Grenadière, without, itmust be confessed, very vividly seeing it, you follow the quay to theright and pass out of sight of the charming _côteau_ which, from beyondthe river, faces the town--a soft agglomeration of gardens, vineyards, scattered villas, gables and turrets of slate-roofed châteaux, terraceswith grey balustrades, moss-grown walls draped in scarletVirginia-creeper. You turn into the town again beside a great militarybarrack which is ornamented with a rugged mediæval tower, a relic of theancient fortifications, known to the Tourangeaux of to-day as the Tourde Guise. The young Prince of Joinville, son of that Duke of Guise whowas murdered by the order of Henry II. At Blois, was, after the death ofhis father, confined here for more than two years, but made his escapeone summer evening in 1591, under the nose of his keepers, with agallant audacity which has attached the memory of the exploit to hissullen-looking prison. Tours has a garrison of five regiments, and thelittle red-legged soldiers light up the town. You see them stroll uponthe clean, uncommercial quay, where there are no signs of navigation, not even by oar, no barrels nor bales, no loading nor unloading, nomasts against the sky nor booming of steam in the air. The most activebusiness that goes on there is that patient and fruitless angling inwhich the French, as the votaries of art for art, excel all otherpeople. The little soldiers, weighed down by the contents of theirenormous pockets, pass with respect from one of these masters of the rodto the other, as he sits soaking an indefinite bait in the large, indifferent stream. After you turn your back to the quay you have onlyto go a little way before you reach the cathedral. [Illustration] Chapter ii [Tours: the Cathedral] It is a very beautiful church of the second order of importance, with acharming mouse-coloured complexion and a pair of fantastic towers. Thereis a commodious little square in front of it, from which you may look upat its very ornamental face; but for purposes of frank admiration thesides and the rear are perhaps not sufficiently detached. The cathedralof Tours, which is dedicated to Saint Gatianus, took a long time tobuild. Begun in 1170, it was finished only in the first half of thesixteenth century; but the ages and the weather have interfused so wellthe tone of the different parts that it presents, at first at least, nostriking incongruities, and looks even exceptionally harmonious andcomplete. There are many grander cathedrals, but there are probably fewmore pleasing; and this effect of delicacy and grace is at its besttowards the close of a quiet afternoon, when the densely decoratedtowers, rising above the little Place de l'Archevêché, lift theircurious lanterns into the slanting light and offer a multitudinous perchto troops of circling pigeons. The whole front, at such a time, has anappearance of great richness, although the niches which surround thethree high doors (with recesses deep enough for several circles ofsculpture) and indent the four great buttresses that ascend beside thehuge rose-window, carry no figures beneath their little chiselledcanopies. The blast of the great Revolution blew down most of thestatues in France, and the wind has never set very strongly towardsputting them up again. The embossed and crocketed cupolas which crownthe towers of Saint Gatien are not very pure in taste; but, like a goodmany impurities, they have a certain character. The interior has astately slimness with which no fault is to be found and which in thechoir, rich in early glass and surrounded by a broad passage, becomesvery bold and noble. Its principal treasure perhaps is the charminglittle tomb of the two children (who died young) of Charles VIII. AndAnne of Brittany, in white marble embossed with symbolic dolphins andexquisite arabesques. The little boy and girl lie side by side on a slabof black marble, and a pair of small kneeling angels, both at their headand at their feet, watch over them. Nothing could be more elegant thanthis monument, which is the work of Michel Colomb, one of the earlierglories of the French Renaissance; it is really a lesson in good taste. Originally placed in the great abbey-church of Saint Martin, which wasfor so many ages the holy place of Tours, it happily survived thedevastation to which that edifice, already sadly shattered by the warsof religion and successive profanations, finally succumbed in 1797. In1815 the tomb found an asylum in a quiet corner of the cathedral. I ought perhaps to be ashamed to acknowledge that I found the profanename of Balzac capable of adding an interest even to this venerablesanctuary. Those who have read the terrible little story of "Le Curé deTours" will perhaps remember that, as I have already mentioned, thesimple and childlike old Abbé Birotteau, victim of the infernalmachinations of the Abbé Troubert and Mademoiselle Gamard, had hisquarters in the house of that lady (she had a specialty of lettinglodgings to priests), which stood on the north side of the cathedral, soclose under its walls that the supporting pillar of one of the greatflying buttresses was planted in the spinster's garden. If you wanderround behind the church in search of this more than historic habitationyou will have occasion to see that the side and rear of Saint Gatienmake a delectable and curious figure. A narrow lane passes beside thehigh wall which conceals from sight the palace of the archbishop andbeneath the flying buttresses, the far-projecting gargoyles, and thefine south porch of the church. It terminates in a little deadgrass-grown square entitled the Place Grégoire de Tours. All this partof the exterior of the cathedral is very brown, ancient, Gothic, grotesque; Balzac calls the whole place "a desert of stone. " Abattered and gabled wing or out-house (as it appears to be) of thehidden palace, with a queer old stone pulpit jutting out from it, looksdown on this melancholy spot, on the other side of which is a seminaryfor young priests, one of whom issues from a door in a quiet corner, and, holding it open a moment behind him, shows a glimpse of a sunnygarden, where you may fancy other black young figures strolling up anddown. Mademoiselle Gamard's house, where she took her two abbés toboard, and basely conspired with one against the other, is still fartherround the cathedral. You cannot quite put your hand upon it to-day, forthe dwelling of which you say to yourself that it must have beenMademoiselle Gamard's does not fulfil all the conditions mentioned inBalzac's description. The edifice in question, however, fulfilsconditions enough; in particular, its little court offers hospitality tothe big buttress of the church. Another buttress, corresponding withthis (the two, between them, sustain the gable of the north transept), is planted in the small cloister, of which the door on the farther sideof the little soundless Rue de la Psalette, where nothing seems ever topass, opens opposite to that of Mademoiselle Gamard. There is a verygenial old sacristan, who introduced me to this cloister from thechurch. It is very small and solitary, and much mutilated; but itnestles with a kind of wasted friendliness beneath the big walls of thecathedral. Its lower arcades have been closed, and it has a small plotof garden in the middle, with fruit-trees which I should imagine to betoo much overshadowed. In one corner is a remarkably picturesque turret, the cage of a winding staircase which ascends (no great distance) to anupper gallery, where an old priest, the _chanoine-gardien_ of thechurch, was walking to and fro with his breviary. The turret, thegallery, and even the chanoine-gardien, belonged, that sweet Septembermorning, to the class of objects that are dear to painters inwater-colours. [Illustration] Chapter iii [Tours: Saint Martin] I have mentioned the church of Saint Martin, which was for many yearsthe sacred spot, the shrine of pilgrimage, of Tours. Originally thesimple burial-place of the great apostle who in the fourth centuryChristianised Gaul and who, in his day a brilliant missionary and workerof miracles, is chiefly known to modern fame as the worthy that cut hiscloak in two at the gate of Amiens to share it with a beggar (traditionfails to say, I believe, what he did with the other half), the abbey ofSaint Martin, through the Middle Ages, waxed rich and powerful, till itwas known at last as one of the most luxurious religious houses inChristendom, with kings for its titular abbots (who, like Francis I. , sometimes turned and despoiled it) and a great treasure of preciousthings. It passed, however, through many vicissitudes. Pillaged by theNormans in the ninth century and by the Huguenots in the sixteenth, itreceived its death-blow from the Revolution, which must have brought tobear upon it an energy of destruction proportionate to its mighty bulk. At the end of the last century a huge group of ruins alone remained, andwhat we see to-day may be called the ruin of a ruin. It is difficult tounderstand how so vast an edifice can have been so completelyobliterated. Its site is given up to several ugly streets, and a pair oftall towers, separated by a space which speaks volumes as to the size ofthe church and looking across the close-pressed roofs to the happierspires of the cathedral, preserve for the modern world the memory of agreat fortune, a great abuse, perhaps, and at all events a greatpenalty. One may believe that to this day a considerable part of thefoundations of the great abbey is buried in the soil of Tours. The twosurviving towers, which are dissimilar in shape, are enormous; withthose of the cathedral they form the great landmarks of the town. One ofthem bears the name of the Tour de l'Horloge; the other, the so-calledTour Charlemagne, was erected (two centuries after her death) over thetomb of Luitgarde, wife of the great Emperor, who died at Tours in 800. I do not pretend to understand in what relation these very mighty andeffectually detached masses of masonry stood to each other, but in theirgrey elevation and loneliness they are striking and suggestive to-day;holding their hoary heads far above the modern life of the town andlooking sad and conscious, as they had outlived all uses. I know notwhat is supposed to have become of the bones [Illustration: TOURS--THE TOWERS OF ST. MARTIN] of the blessed saint during the various scenes of confusion in whichthey may have got mislaid; but a mystic connection with hiswonder-working relics may be perceived in a strange little sanctuary onthe left of the street, which opens in front of the TourCharlemagne--whose immemorial base, by the way, inhabited like a cavern, with a diminutive doorway where, as I passed, an old woman stoodcleaning a pot, and a little dark window decorated with homely flowers, would be appreciated by a painter in search of "bits. " The presentshrine of Saint Martin is enclosed (provisionally, I suppose) in a verymodern structure of timber, where in a dusky cellar, to which youdescend by a wooden staircase adorned with votive tablets and paperroses, is placed a tabernacle surrounded by twinkling tapers andprostrate worshippers. Even this crepuscular vault, however, fails, Ithink, to attain solemnity; for the whole place is strangely vulgar andgarish. The Catholic Church, as churches go to-day, is certainly themost spectacular; but it must feel that it has a great fund ofimpressiveness to draw upon when it opens such sordid little shops ofsanctity as this. It is impossible not to be struck with thegrotesqueness of such an establishment as the last link in the chain ofa great ecclesiastical tradition. In the same street, on the other side, a little below, is somethingbetter worth your visit than the shrine of Saint Martin. Knock at a highdoor in a white wall (there is a cross above it), and a fresh-facedsister of the convent of the Petit Saint Martin will let you into thecharming little cloister, or rather fragment of cloister. Only one sideof this surpassing structure remains, but the whole place is effective. In front of the beautiful arcade, which is terribly bruised andobliterated, is one of those walks of interlaced _tilleuls_ which are sofrequent in Touraine, and into which the green light filters so softlythrough a lattice of clipped twigs. Beyond this is a garden, and beyondthe garden are the other buildings of the convent, where the placidsisters keep a school--a test, doubtless, of placidity. The imperfectarcade, which dates from the beginning of the sixteenth century (I knownothing of it but what is related in Mrs. Pattison's "Renaissance inFrance"), is a truly enchanting piece of work; the cornice and theangles of the arches being covered with the daintiest sculpture ofarabesques, flowers, fruit, medallions, cherubs, griffins, all in thefinest and most attenuated relief. It is like the chasing of a braceletin stone. The taste, the fancy, the elegance, the refinement, are of theorder that straightens up again our drooping standard of distinction. Such a piece of work is the purest flower of the French Renaissance;there is nothing more delicate in all Touraine. [Tours: Saint Julian] There is another fine thing at Tours which is not particularly delicate, but which makes a great impression--the very interesting old church ofSaint Julian, lurking in a crooked corner at the right of the RueRoyale, near the point at which this indifferent thoroughfare emerges, with its little cry of admiration, on the bank of the Loire. SaintJulian stands to-day in a kind of neglected hollow, where it is muchshut in by houses; but in the year 1225, when the edifice was begun, thesite was doubtless, as the architects say, more eligible. At presentindeed, when once you have caught a glimpse of the stout, seriousRomanesque tower--which is not high, but strong--you feel that thebuilding has something to say and that you must stop to listen to it. Within, it has a vast and splendid nave, of immense height, the nave ofa cathedral, with a shallow choir and transepts and some admirable oldglass. I spent half an hour there one morning, listening to what thechurch had to say, in perfect solitude. Not a worshipper entered, noteven an old man with a broom. I have always thought there be a sex infine buildings; and Saint Julian, with its noble nave, is of the genderof the name of its patron. It was that same morning, I think, that I went in search of the oldhouses of Tours; for the town contains several goodly specimens of thedomestic architecture of the past. The dwelling to which the averageAnglo-Saxon will most promptly direct his steps, and the only one I havespace to mention, is the so-called Maison de Tristan l'Hermite--agentleman whom the readers of "Quentin Durward" will not haveforgotten--the hangman-in-ordinary to that great and prompt chastenerLouis XI. Unfortunately the house of Tristan is not the house of Tristanat all; this illusion has been cruelly dispelled. There are no illusionsleft at all, in the good city of Tours, with regard to Louis XI. Histerrible castle of Plessis, the picture of which sends a shiver throughthe youthful reader of Scott, has been reduced to suburbaninsignificance; and the residence of his _triste compère_, on the frontof which a festooned rope figures as a motive for decoration, isobserved to have been erected in the succeeding century. The Maison deTristan may be visited for itself, however, if not for Sir Walter; it isan exceedingly picturesque old façade, to which you pick your waythrough a narrow and tortuous street--a street terminating, a littlebeyond it, in the walk beside the river. An elegant Gothic doorway islet into the rusty-red brickwork, and strange little beasts crouch atthe angles of the windows, which are surmounted by a tall graduatedgable, pierced with a small orifice, where the large surface of brick, lifted out of the shadow of the street, looks yellow and faded. Thewhole thing is disfigured and decayed; but it is a capital subject for asketch in colours. Only I must wish the sketcher better luck--or abetter temper--than my own. If he ring the bell to be admitted to seethe court, which I believe is more sketchable still, let him havepatience to wait till the bell is answered. He can do the outside whilethey are coming. [Tours: Plessis-les-Tours] The Maison de Tristan, I say, may be visited for itself; but I hardlyknow for what the remnants of Plessis-les-Tours may be investigated. Toreach them you wander through crooked suburban lanes, down the course ofthe Loire, to a rough, undesirable, incongruous spot, where a small, crude building of red brick is pointed out to you by your cabman (if youhappen to drive) as the legendary frame of the grim portrait, and wherea strong odour of pigsties and other unclean things so prostrates youfor the moment that you have no energy to protest against this obviousfiction. You enter a yard encumbered with rubbish and a defiant dog, andan old woman emerges from a shabby lodge and assures you that you standdeep in historic dust. The red brick building, which looks like a smallfactory, rises on the ruins of the favourite residence of the dreadfulLouis. It is now occupied by a company of night-scavengers, whose hugecarts are drawn up in a row before it. I know not whether this be whatis called the irony of fate; in any case, the effect of it is toaccentuate strongly the fact (and through the most susceptible of oursenses) that there is no honour for the authors of great wrongs. Thedreadful Louis is reduced simply to an offence to the nostrils. The oldwoman shows you a few fragments--several dark, damp, much-encumberedvaults, denominated dungeons, and an old tower staircase in goodcondition. There are the outlines of the old moat; there is also theoutline of the old guard-room, which is now a stable; and there areother silhouettes of the undistinguishable, which I have forgotten. Youneed all your imagination, and even then you cannot make out thatPlessis was a castle of large extent, though the old woman, as your eyewanders over the neighbouring _potagers_, discourses much of the gardensand the park. The place looks mean and flat; and as you drive away youscarcely know whether to be glad or sorry that all those bristlinghorrors have been reduced to the commonplace. [Tours: Marmoutier] A certain flatness of impression awaits you also, I think, atMarmoutier, which is the other indispensable excursion in the nearneighbourhood of Tours. The remains of this famous abbey lie on theother bank of the stream, about a mile and a half from the town. Youfollow the edge of the big brown river; of a fine afternoon you will beglad to go farther still. The abbey has gone the way of most abbeys; butthe place is a restoration as well as a ruin, inasmuch as the Sisters ofthe Sacred Heart have erected a terribly modern convent here. A largeGothic doorway, in a high fragment of ancient wall, admits you to agarden-like enclosure, of great extent, from which you are furtherintroduced into an extraordinarily tidy little parlour, where two goodnuns sit at work. One of these came out with me and showed me over theplace--a very definite little woman, with pointed features, an intenselydistinct enunciation, and those pretty manners which (for whatever otherteachings it may be responsible) the Catholic Church so often instilsinto its functionaries. I have never seen a woman who had got her lessonbetter than this little trotting, murmuring, edifying nun. The interestof Marmoutier to-day is not so much an interest of vision, so to speak, as an interest of reflection--that is, if you choose to reflect (forinstance) upon the wondrous legend of the seven sleepers (you may seewhere they lie in a row), who lived together--they were brothers andcousins--in primitive piety, in the sanctuary constructed by the blessedSaint Martin (emulous of his precursor, Saint Gatianus), in the face ofthe hillside that overhung the Loire, and who, twenty-five years afterhis death, yielded up their seven souls at the same moment and enjoyedthe rare convenience of retaining in their faces, in spite of mortality, every aspect of health. The abbey of Marmoutier, which sprang from thegrottos in the cliff to which Saint Gatianus and Saint Martin retired topray, was therefore the creation of the latter worthy, as the othergreat abbey, in the town proper, was the monument of his repose. Thecliff is still there; and a winding staircase, in the latest taste, enables you conveniently to explore its recesses. These sacred nichesare scooped out of the rock, and will give you an impression if youcannot do without one. You will feel them to be sufficiently venerablewhen you learn that the particular pigeon-hole of Saint Gatianus, thefirst Christian missionary to Gaul, dates from the third century. Theyhave been dealt with as the Catholic Church deals with most of suchplaces to-day; polished and furbished up, labelled andticketed--_edited_, with notes, in short, like an old book. The processis a mistake--the early editions had more sanctity. The modern buildings(of the Sacred Heart), on which you look down from these points ofvantage, are in the vulgar taste which sets its so mechanical stamp onall new Catholic work; but there was nevertheless a great sweetness inthe scene. The afternoon was lovely, and it was flushing to a close. Thelarge garden stretched beneath us, blooming with fruit and and wine andsucculent promise, and beyond it flowed the shining river. The air wasstill, the shadows were long, and the place, after all, was full ofmemories, most of which might pass for virtuous. It certainly was betterthan Plessis-les-Tours. [Illustration] Chapter iv [Blois] Your business at Tours is to make excursions; and if you make them allyou will be always under arms. The land is a rich reliquary, and anhour's drive from the town in almost any direction will bring you to theknowledge of some curious fragment of domestic or ecclesiasticalarchitecture, some turreted manor, some lonely tower, some gabledvillage, some scene of something. Yet even if you do everything--whichwas not my case--you cannot hope to tell everything, and, fortunatelyfor you, the excursions divide themselves into the greater and the less. You may achieve most of the greater in a week or two; but a summer inTouraine (which, by the way, must be a [Illustration: BLOIS] delectable thing) would hold none too many days for the others. If youcome down to Tours from Paris your best economy is to spend a few daysat Blois, where a clumsy but rather attractive little inn on the edge ofthe river will offer you a certain amount of that familiar andintermittent hospitality which a few weeks spent in the French provincesteaches you to regard as the highest attainable form of accommodation. Such an economy I was unable to practise. I could only go to Blois (fromTours) to spend the day; but this feat I accomplished twice over. It isa very sympathetic little town, as we say nowadays, and a week therewould be sociable even without company. Seated on the north bank of theLoire, it presents a bright, clean face to the sun and has that aspectof cheerful leisure which belongs to all white towns that reflectthemselves in shining waters. It is the water-front only of Blois, however, that exhibits this fresh complexion; the interior is of aproper brownness, as old sallow books are bound in vellum. The onlydisappointment is perforce the discovery that the castle, which is thespecial object of one's pilgrimage, does not overhang the river, as Ihad always allowed myself to understand. It overhangs the town, but isscarcely visible from the stream. That peculiar good fortune is reservedfor Amboise and Chaumont. The Château de Blois is one of the most beautiful and elaborate of allthe old royal residences of this part of France, and I suppose it shouldhave all the honours of my description. As you cross its threshold youstep straight into the sunshine and storm of the French Renaissance. Butit is too rich to describe--I can only pick out the high lights. It mustbe premised that in speaking of it as we see it to-day we speak of amonument unsparingly restored. The work of restoration has been asingenious as it is profuse, but it rather chills the imagination. Thisis perhaps almost the first thing you feel as you approach the castlefrom the streets of the town. These little streets, as they leave theriver, have pretensions to romantic steepness; one of them, indeed, which resolves itself into a high staircase with divergent wings (the_escalier monumental_), achieved this result so successfully as toremind me vaguely--I hardly know why--of the great slope of the Capitol, beside the Ara Coeli, at Rome. The view of that part of the castle whichfigures to-day as the back (it is the only aspect I had seen reproduced)exhibits the marks of restoration with the greatest assurance. The longfaçade, consisting only of balconied windows deeply recessed, erectsitself on the summit of a considerable hill, which gives a fine, plunging movement to its foundations. The deep niches of the windows areall aglow with colour. They have been repainted with red and blue, relieved with gold figures; and each of them looks more like the royalbox at a theatre than like the aperture of a palace dark with memories. For all this, however, and in spite of the fact that, as in some othersof the châteaux of Touraine (always excepting the colossal Chambord, which is not in Touraine), there is less vastness than one had expected, the least hospitable aspect of Blois is abundantly impressive. Here, aselsewhere, lightness and grace are the keynote; and the recesses of thewindows, with their happy proportions, their sculpture and their colour, are the hollow sockets of the human ornament. They need the figure of aFrancis I. To complete them, or of a Diane de Poitiers, or even of aHenry III. The stand of this empty gilt cage emerges from a bed of lightverdure which has been allowed to mass itself there and whichcontributes [Illustration: BLOIS--THE CHÂTEAU] to the springing look of the walls; while on the right it joins the mostmodern portion of the castle, the building erected, on foundations ofenormous height and solidity, in 1635, by Gaston d'Orléans. This finefrigid mansion--the proper view of it is from the court within--is oneof the masterpieces of François Mansard, whom a kind providence did notallow to make over the whole palace in the superior manner of hissuperior age. That had been a part of Gaston's plan--he was a blundererborn, and this precious project was worthy of him. This execution of itwould surely have been one of the great misdeeds of history. Partiallyperformed, the misdeed is not altogether to be regretted; for as onestands in the court of the castle and lets one's eye wander from thesplendid wing of Francis I. --which is the last word of free and joyousinvention--to the ruled lines and blank spaces of the ponderous pavilionof Mansard, one makes one's reflections upon the advantage, in even theleast personal of the arts, of having something to say, and upon thestupidity of a taste which had ended by becoming an aggregation ofnegatives. Gaston's wing, taken by itself, has much of the _bel air_which was to belong to the architecture of Louis XIV. ; but, taken incontrast to its flowering, laughing, living neighbour, it marks thedifference between inspiration and calculation. We scarcely grudge itits place, however, for it adds a price to the rest of the pile. We have entered the court, by the way, by jumping over the walls. Themore orthodox method is to follow a modern terrace which leads to theleft, from the side of the edifice that I began by speaking of, andpasses round, ascending, to a little square on a considerably higherlevel, a square not, like the rather prosaic space on which the back (asI have called it) looks out, a thoroughfare. This small empty _place_, oblong in form, at once bright and quiet, and which ought to begrass-grown, offers an excellent setting to the entrance-front of thepalace--the wing of Louis XII. The restoration here has been lavish; butit was perhaps but an inevitable reaction against the injuries, stillmore lavish, by which the unfortunate building had long beenoverwhelmed. It had fallen into a state of ruinous neglect, relievedonly by the misuse proceeding from successive generations of soldiers, for whom its charming chambers served as barrack-room. Whitewashed, mutilated, dishonoured, the castle of Blois may be said to have escapedsimply with its life. This is the history of Amboise as well, and is toa certain extent the history of Chambord. Delightful, at any rate, wasthe refreshed façade of Louis XII. As I stood and looked at it onebright September morning. In that soft, clear, merry light of Touraine, everything shows, everything speaks. Charming are the taste, the happyproportions, the colour of this beautiful front, to which the newfeeling for a purely domestic architecture--an architecture of securityand tranquillity, in which art could indulge itself--gave an air ofyouth and gladness. It is true that for a long time to come the castleof Blois was neither very safe nor very quiet; but its dangers came fromwithin, from the evil passions of its inhabitants, and not from siege orinvasion. The front of Louis XII. Is of red brick, crossed here andthere with purple; and the purple slate of the high roof, relieved withchimneys beautifully treated and with the embroidered caps of pinnaclesand arches, with the porcupine of Louis, the ermine and the festoonedrope which formed the devices of Anne of Brittany--the tone of thisdecorative roof carries out the mild glow of the wall. The wide, fairwindows open as if they had expanded to let in the rosy dawn of theRenaissance. Charming, for that matter, are the windows of all thechâteaux of Touraine, with their squareness corrected (as it is not inthe Tudor architecture) by the curve of the upper corners, which givesthis line the look, above the expressive aperture, of a pencilledeyebrow. The low door of this front is crowned by a high, deep niche, inwhich, under a splendid canopy, stiffly astride of a stiffly-drapedcharger, sits in profile an image of the good King Louis. Good as he hadbeen--the father of his people, as he was called (I believe he remittedvarious taxes)--he was not good enough to pass muster at the Revolution;and the effigy I have just described is no more than a reproduction ofthe primitive statue demolished at that period. Pass beneath it into the court, and the sixteenth century closes roundyou. It is a pardonable flight of fancy to say that the expressive facesof an age in which human passions lay very near the surface seem to peepout at you from the windows, from the balconies, from the thick foliageof the sculpture. The portion of the wing of Louis XII. That frontstoward the court is supported on a deep arcade. On your right is thewing erected by Francis I. , the reverse of the mass of building whichyou see on approaching the castle. This exquisite, this extravagant, this transcendent piece of architecture is the most joyous utterance ofthe French Renaissance. It is covered with an embroidery of sculpture inwhich every detail is worthy of the hand of a goldsmith. In the middleof it, or rather a little to the left, rises the famous windingstaircase (plausibly, but I believe not religiously, restored), whicheven the ages which most misused it must vaguely have admired. It formsa kind of chiselled cylinder, with wide interstices, so that the stairsare open to the air. Every inch of this structure, of its balconies, itspillars, its great central columns, is wrought over with lovely images, strange and ingenious devices, prime among which is the great heraldicsalamander of Francis I. The salamander is everywhere at Blois--over thechimneys, over the doors, on the walls. This whole quarter of the castlebears the stamp of that eminently pictorial prince. The running cornicealong the top of the front is like an unfolded, an elongated bracelet. The windows of the attic are like shrines for saints. The gargoyles, themedallions, the statuettes, the festoons are like the elaboration ofsome precious cabinet rather than the details of a building exposed tothe weather and to the ages. In the interior there is a profusion ofrestoration, and it is all restoration in colour. This has been, evidently, a work of great energy and cost, but it will easily strikeyou as overdone. The universal freshness is a discord, a false note; itseems to light up the dusky past with an unnatural glare. Begun in thereign of Louis Philippe, this terrible process--the more terrible alwaysthe better case you conceive made out for it--has been carried so farthat there is now scarcely a square inch of the interior that preservesthe colour of the past. It is true that the place had been so coatedover with modern abuse that something was needed to keep it alive; it isonly perhaps a pity the clever doctors, not content with saving itslife, should have undertaken to restore its bloom. The love ofconsistency, in such a business, is a dangerous lure. All the oldapartments have been rechristened, as it were; the geography of thecastle has been re-established. The guard-rooms, the bedrooms, theclosets, the oratories have recovered their identity. Every spotconnected with the murder of the Duke of Guise is pointed out by asmall, shrill boy, who takes you from room to room and who has learnedhis lesson in perfection. The place is full of Catherine de'Medici, ofHenry III. , of memories, of ghosts, of echoes, of possible evocationsand revivals. It is covered with crimson and gold. The fireplaces andthe ceilings are magnificent; they look like expensive "sets" at thegrand opera. I should have mentioned that below, in the court, the front of the wingof Gaston d'Orléans faces you as you enter, so that the place is acourse of French history. Inferior in beauty and grace to the otherportions of the castle, the wing is yet a nobler monument than thememory of Gaston deserves. The second of the sons of Henry IV. --who wasno more fortunate as a father than as a husband--younger brother ofLouis XIII. And father of the great Mademoiselle, the most celebrated, most ambitious, most self-complacent and most unsuccessful _fille àmarier_ in French history, passed in enforced retirement at the castleof Blois the close of a life of clumsy intrigues against CardinalRichelieu, in which his rashness was only equalled by his pusillanimityand his ill-luck by his inaccessibility to correction, and which, afterso many follies and shames, was properly summed up in theproject--begun, but not completed--of demolishing the beautifulhabitation of his exile in order to erect a better one. With Gastond'Orléans, however, who lived there without dignity, the history of theChâteau de Blois declines. Its interesting period is that of the wars ofreligion. It was the chief residence of Henry III. , and the scene of theprincipal events of his depraved and dramatic rule. It has been restoredmore than enough, as I have said, by architects and decorators; thevisitor, as he moves through its empty rooms, which are at oncebrilliant and ill-lighted (they have not been refurnished), undertakes alittle restoration of his own. His imagination helps itself from thethings that remain; he tries to see the life of the sixteenth century inits form and dress--its turbulence, its passions, its loves and hates, its treacheries, falsities, sincerities, faith, its latitude of personaldevelopment, its presentation of the whole nature, its nobleness ofcostume, charm of speech, splendour of taste, unequalledpicturesqueness. The picture is full of movement, of contrasted lightand darkness, full altogether of abominations. Mixed up with them all isthe great theological motive, so that the drama wants little to make itcomplete. What episode was ever more perfect--looked at as a dramaticoccurrence--than the murder of the Duke of Guise? The insolentprosperity of the victim; the weakness, the vices, the terrors, of theauthor of the deed; the perfect execution of the plot; the accumulationof horror in what followed it--render it, as a crime, one of the classicthings. But we must not take the Château de Blois too hard: I went there, afterall, by way of entertainment. If among these sinister memories yourvisit should threaten to prove a tragedy, there is an excellent way ofremoving the impression. You may treat yourself at Blois to a verycheerful afterpiece. There is a charming industry practised there, andpractised in charming conditions. Follow the bright little quay down theriver till you get quite out of the town and reach the point where theroad beside the Loire becomes sinuous and attractive, turns the cornerof diminutive headlands and makes you wonder what is beyond. Let notyour curiosity induce you, however, to pass by a modest white villawhich overlooks the stream, enclosed in a fresh little court; for heredwells an artist--an artist in faience. There is no sort of sign, andthe place looks peculiarly private. But if you ring at the gate you willnot be turned away. You will, on the contrary, be ushered upstairs intoa parlour--there is nothing resembling a shop--encumbered with specimensof remarkably handsome pottery. The ware is of the best, a carefulreproduction of old forms, colours, devices; and the master of theestablishment is one of those completely artistic types that are oftenfound in France. His reception is as friendly as his work is ingenious;and I think it is not too much to say that you like the work betterbecause he has produced it. His vases, cups and jars, lamps, platters, _plaques_, with their brilliant glaze, their innumerable figures, theirfamily likeness and wide variations, are scattered through his occupiedrooms; they serve at once as his stock-in-trade and as householdornament. As we all know, this is an age of prose, of machinery, ofwholesale production, of coarse and hasty processes. But one brings awayfrom the establishment of the very intelligent M. Ulysse the sense of aless eager activity and a greater search for perfection. He has but afew workmen and he gives them plenty of time. The place makes a littlevignette, leaves an impression--the quiet white house in its garden onthe road by the wide, clear river, without the smoke, the bustle, theugliness, of so much of our modern industry. It struck me as an effortMr. Ruskin might have inspired and Mr. William Morris--though that bemuch to say--have forgiven. [Illustration] Chapter v [Chambord] The second time I went to Blois I took a carriage for Chambord, and cameback by the Château de Cheverny and the forest of Russy--a charminglittle expedition, to which the beauty of the afternoon (the finest in arainy season that was spotted with bright days) contributed not alittle. To go to Chambord you cross the Loire, leave it on one side andstrike away through a country in which salient features become less andless numerous and which at last has no other quality than a look ofintense and peculiar rurality--the characteristic, even when it be notthe charm, of so much of the landscape of France. This is not theappearance of wildness, for it goes with great cultivation; it is simplythe presence of the delving, drudging, economising peasant. But it is adeep, unrelieved rusticity. It is a peasant's landscape; not, as inEngland, a landlord's. On the way to Chambord you enter the flat andsandy Sologne. The wide horizon opens out like a great _potager_, without interruptions, without an eminence, with here and there a long, low stretch of wood. There is an absence of hedges, fences, signs ofproperty; everything is absorbed in the general flatness--the patches ofvineyard, the scattered cottages, the villages, the children (plantedand staring and almost always pretty), the women in the fields, thewhite caps, the faded blouses, the big sabots. At the end of an hour'sdrive (they assure you at Blois that even with two horses you will spenddouble that time), I passed through a sort of gap in a wall which doesduty as the gateway of the domain of a proscribed pretender. I followeda straight avenue through a disfeatured park--the park of Chambord hastwenty-one miles of circumference; a very sandy, scrubby, melancholyplantation, in which the timber must have been cut many times over andis to-day a mere tangle of brushwood. Here, as in so many spots inFrance, the traveller perceives that he is in a land of revolutions. Nevertheless its great extent and the long perspective of its avenuesgive this frugal shrubbery a certain state; just as its shabbinessplaces it in agreement with one of the strongest impressions awaitingyou. You pursue one of these long perspectives a proportionate time, andat last you see the chimneys and pinnacles of Chambord rise apparentlyout of the ground. The filling-in of the wide moats that formerlysurrounded it has, in vulgar parlance, let it down and given it amonstrous over-crowned air that is at the same time a magnificentOrientalism. The towers, the turrets, the cupolas, the gables, thelanterns, the chimneys look more like the spires of a city than thesalient points of a single building. You emerge from the avenue andfind yourself at the foot of an enormous fantastic mass. Chambord has astrange mixture of society and solitude. A little village clusterswithin view of its liberal windows, and a couple of inns near by offerentertainment to pilgrims. These things of course are incidents of thepolitical proscription which hangs its thick veil over the place. Chambord is truly royal--royal in its great scale, its grand air, itsindifference to common considerations. If a cat may look at a king, atavern may look at a palace. I enjoyed my visit to this extraordinarystructure as much as if I had been a legitimist; and indeed there issomething interesting in any monument of a great system, any boldpresentation of a tradition. You leave your vehicle at one of the inns, which are very decent andtidy and in which every one is very civil, as if in this latter respectthe neighbourhood of a Court veritably set the fashion, and you proceedacross the grass and the gravel to a small door, a door infinitelysubordinate and conferring no title of any kind on those who enter it. Here you ring a bell, which a highly respectable person answers (aperson perceptibly affiliated, again, to the old regime), after whichshe ushers you over a vestibule into an inner court. Perhaps thestrongest impression I got at Chambord came to me as I stood in thiscourt. The woman who admitted me did not come with me; I was to find myguide somewhere else. The specialty of Chambord is its prodigious roundtowers. There are, I believe, no less than eight of them, placed at eachangle of the inner and outer square of buildings; for the castle is inthe form of a larger structure which encloses a smaller one. One ofthese towers stood before me in the court; it seemed to fling itsshadow [Illustration: CHAMBORD] over the place; while above, as I looked up, the pinnacles and gables, the enormous chimneys, soared into the bright blue air. The place wasempty and silent; shadows of gargoyles, of extraordinary projections, were thrown across the clear grey surfaces. One felt that the wholething was monstrous. A cicerone appeared, a languid young man in arather shabby livery, and led me about with a mixture of the impatientand the desultory, of condescension and humility. I do not profess tounderstand the plan of Chambord, and I may add that I do not even desireto do so; for it is much more entertaining to think of it, as you can soeasily, as an irresponsible, insoluble labyrinth. Within it is awilderness of empty chambers, a royal and romantic barrack. The exiledprince to whom it gives its title has not the means to keep up fourhundred rooms; he contents himself with preserving the huge outside. Therepairs of the prodigious roof alone must absorb a large part of hisrevenue. The great feature of the interior is the celebrated doublestaircase, rising straight through the building, with two courses ofsteps, so that people may ascend and descend without meeting. Thisstaircase is a truly majestic piece of humour; it gives you the note, asit were, of Chambord. It opens on each landing to a vast guard-room, infour arms, radiations of the winding shaft. My guide made me climb tothe great open-work lantern which, springing from the roof at thetermination of the rotund staircase (surmounted here by a smaller one), forms the pinnacle of the bristling crown of the pile. This lantern istipped with a huge _fleur-de-lis_ in stone--the only one, I believe, that the Revolution did not succeed in pulling down. Here, from narrowwindows, you look over the wide, flat country and the tangled, melancholy park, with the rotation of its straight avenues. Then youwalk about the roof in a complication of galleries, terraces, balconies, through the multitude of chimneys and gables. This roof, which is initself a sort of castle in the air, has an extravagant, fabulousquality, and with its profuse ornamentation--the salamander of FrancisI. Is a constant motive--its lonely pavements, its sunny niches, thebalcony that looks down over the closed and grass-grown main entrance, astrange, half-sad, half-brilliant charm. The stonework is covered withfine mould. There are places that reminded me of some of those quietmildewed corners of courts and terraces into which the traveller whowanders through the Vatican looks down from neglected windows. They showyou two or three furnished rooms, with Bourbon portraits, hideoustapestries from the ladies of France, a collection of the toys of the_enfant du miracle_, all military and of the finest make. "Tout celafonctionne, " the guide said of these miniature weapons; and I wondered, if he should take it into his head to fire off his little cannon, howmuch harm the Comte de Chambord would do. From below the castle would look crushed by the redundancy of its upperprotuberances if it were not for the enormous girth of its round towers, which appear to give it a robust lateral development. These towers, however, fine as they are in their way, struck me as a little stupid;they are the exaggeration of an exaggeration. In a building erectedafter the days of defence and proclaiming its peaceful character fromits hundred embroideries and cupolas, they seem to indicate a want ofinvention. I shall risk the accusation of bad taste if I say that, impressive as it is, the Château de Chambord seemed to me to havealtogether a touch of that quality of stupidity. The trouble is that itstands for nothing very momentous; it has not happened, in spite ofsundry vicissitudes, to have a strongly-marked career. Compared withthat of Blois and Amboise its past is rather vacant; and one feels to acertain extent the contrast between its pompous appearance and itsspacious but somewhat colourless annals. It had indeed the good fortuneto be erected by Francis I. , whose name by itself expresses a good dealof history. Why he should have built a palace in those sandy plains willever remain an unanswered question, for kings have never been obliged togive reasons. In addition to the fact that the country was rich in gameand that Francis was a passionate hunter, it is suggested by M. De laSaussaye, the author of the very complete little account of the placewhich you may buy at the bookseller's at Blois, that he was governed inhis choice of the site by the chance that a charming woman hadpreviously lived there. The Comtesse de Thoury had a manor in theneighbourhood, and the Comtesse de Thoury had been the object of ayouthful passion on the part of the most susceptible of princes beforehis accession to the throne. This great pile was reared, therefore, according to M. De la Saussaye, as a _souvenir de premières amours_! Itis certainly a very massive memento; and if these tender passages wereproportionate to the building that commemorates them, the flame blazedindeed. There has been much discussion as to the architect employed byFrancis I. , and the honour of having designed this splendid residencehas been claimed for several of the Italian artists who early in thesixteenth century came to seek patronage in France. It seems wellestablished to-day, however, that Chambord was the work neither ofPrimaticcio, of Vignola, nor of Il Rosso, all of whom have left sometrace of their sojourn in France; but of an obscure yet very completegenius, Pierre Nepveu, known as Pierre Trinqueau, who is designated inthe papers which preserve in some degree the history of the origin ofthe edifice, as the _maistre de l'oeuvre de maçonnerie_. Behind thismodest title, apparently, we must recognise one of the most originaltalents of the French Renaissance; and it is a proof of the vigour ofthe artistic life of that period that, brilliant production beingeverywhere abundant, an artist of so high a value should not have beentreated by his contemporaries as a celebrity. We make our celebritiesto-day at smaller cost. The immediate successors of Francis I. Continued to visit Chambord; butit was neglected by Henry IV. And was never afterwards a favouriteresidence of any French king. Louis XIV. Appeared there on severaloccasions, and the apparition was characteristically brilliant; butChambord could not long detain a monarch who had gone to the expense ofcreating a Versailles ten miles from Paris. With Versailles, Fontainebleau, Saint-Germain and Saint-Cloud within easy reach of theircapital, the later French sovereigns had little reason to take the airin the dreariest province of their kingdom. Chambord therefore sufferedfrom royal indifference, though in the last century a use was found forits deserted halls. In 1725 it was occupied by the luckless StanislausLeczynski, who spent the greater part of his life in being elected Kingof Poland and being ousted from his throne, and who, at this time arefugee in France, had found a compensation for some of his misfortunesin marrying his daughter to Louis XV. He lived eight years at Chambordand filled up the moats of the castle. In 1748 it found an illustrioustenant in the person of Maurice de Saxe, the victor of Fontenoy, who, however, two years after he had taken possession of it, terminated alife which would have been longer had he been less determined to make itagreeable. The Revolution, of course, was not kind to Chambord. Itdespoiled it in so far as possible of every vestige of its royal origin, and swept like a whirlwind through apartments to which upwards of twocenturies had contributed a treasure of decoration and furniture. Inthat wild blast these precious things were destroyed or for everscattered. In 1791 an odd proposal was made to the French Government bya company of English Quakers, who had conceived the bold idea ofestablishing in the palace a manufacture of some peaceful commodity notto-day recorded. Napoleon allotted Chambord, as a "dotation, " to one ofhis marshals, Berthier, for whose benefit it was converted, inNapoleonic fashion, into the so-called principality of Wagram. By thePrincess of Wagram, the marshal's widow, it was, after the Restoration, sold to the trustees of a national subscription which had beenestablished for the purpose of presenting it to the infant Duke ofBordeaux, then prospective King of France. The presentation was dulymade; but the Comte de Chambord, who had changed his title inrecognition of the gift, was despoiled of his property by the governmentof Louis Philippe. He appealed for redress to the tribunals of hiscountry; and the consequence of his appeal was an interminablelitigation, by which, however, finally, after the lapse of twenty-fiveyears, he was established in his rights. In 1871 he paid his first visitto the domain which had been offered him half a century before, a termof which he had spent forty years in exile. It was from Chambord thathe dated his famous letter of the 5th of July of that year--the letter, directed to his so-called subjects, in which he waves aloft the whiteflag of the Bourbons. This rare miscalculation--virtually an invitationto the French people to repudiate, as their national ensign, thatimmortal tricolour, the flag of the Revolution and the Empire, underwhich they have won the glory which of all glories has hitherto beendearest to them and which is associated with the most romantic, the mostheroic, the epic, the consolatory, period of their history--thisluckless manifesto, I say, appears to give the measure of the politicalwisdom of the excellent Henry V. The proposal should have had lesssimplicity or the people less irony. On the whole Chambord makes a great impression; and the hour I wasthere, while the yellow afternoon light slanted upon the Septemberwoods, there was a dignity in its desolation. It spoke, with a muffledbut audible voice, of the vanished monarchy, which had been so strong, so splendid, but to-day had become a vision almost as fantastic as thecupolas and chimneys that rose before me. I thought, while I lingeredthere, of all the fine things it takes to make up such a monarchy; andhow one of them is a superfluity of mouldering, empty palaces. Chambordis touching--that is the best word for it; and if the hopes of anotherrestoration are in the follies of the Republic, a little reflection onthat eloquence of ruin ought to put the Republic on its guard. Asentimental tourist may venture to remark that in presence of all thehaunted houses that appeal in this mystical manner to the retrospectiveimagination it cannot afford to be foolish. I thought of all this as Idrove back to Blois by the way of the Château de Cheverny. The road tookus out of the park of Chambord, but through a region of flat woodland, where the trees were not mighty, and again into the prosy plain of theSologne--a thankless soil to sow, I believe, but lately much amended bythe magic of cheerful French industry and thrift. The light had alreadybegun to fade, and my drive reminded me of a passage in some rural novelof Madame Sand. I passed a couple of timber and plaster churches, whichlooked very old, black and crooked, and had lumpish wooden porches andgalleries encircling the base. By the time I reached Cheverny the cleartwilight had approached. It was late to ask to be allowed to visit aninhabited house; but it was the hour at which I like best to visitalmost anything. My coachman drew up before a gateway, in a high wall, which opened upon a short avenue, along which I took my way on foot; thecoachmen in those parts being, for reasons best known to themselves, mortally averse to driving up to a house. I answered the challenge of avery tidy little portress who sat, in company with a couple of children, enjoying the evening air in front of her lodge, and who told me to walka little farther and turn to the right. I obeyed her to the letter, andmy turn brought me into sight of a house as charming as an old manor ina fairy tale. I had but a rapid and partial view of Cheverny; but thatview was a glimpse of perfection. A light, sweet mansion stood lookingover a wide green lawn, over banks of flowers and groups of trees. Ithad a striking character of elegance, produced partly by a series ofRenaissance busts let into circular niches in the façade. The placelooked so private, so reserved, that it seemed an act of violence toring, a stranger and foreigner, at the graceful door. But if I had notrung I should be unable to express--as it is such a pleasure to do--mysense of the exceeding courtesy with which this admirable house isshown. It was near the dinner-hour--the most sacred hour of the day; butI was freely conducted into the inhabited apartments. They are extremelybeautiful. What I chiefly remember is the charming staircase of whiteembroidered stone, and the great _salle des gardes_ and _chambre àcoucher du roi_ on the second floor. Cheverny, built in 1634, is of amuch later date than the other royal residences of this part of France;it belongs to the end of the Renaissance and has a touch of the rococo. The guard-room is a superb apartment; and as it contains little save itsmagnificent ceiling and fireplace and certain dim tapestries on itswalls, you the more easily take the measure of its noble proportions. The servant opened the shutters of a single window, and the last rays ofthe twilight slanted into the rich brown gloom. It was in the samepicturesque fashion that I saw the bedroom (adjoining) of Henry IV. , where a legendary-looking bed, draped in folds long unaltered, defineditself in the haunted dusk. Cheverny remains to me a very charming, apartly mysterious vision. I drove back to Blois in the dark, some ninemiles, through the forest of Russy, which belongs to the State andwhich, though consisting apparently of small timber, looked under thestars sufficiently vast and primeval. There was a damp autumnal smelland the occasional sound of a stirring thing; and as I moved through theevening air I thought of Francis I. And Henry IV. [Illustration] Chapter vi [Amboise] You may go to Amboise either from Blois or from Tours; it is abouthalf-way between these towns. The great point is to go, especially ifyou have put it off repeatedly; and to go, if possible, on a day whenthe great view of the Loire, which you enjoy from the battlements andterraces, presents itself under a friendly sky. Three persons, of whomthe author of these lines was one, spent the greater part of a perfectSunday morning in looking at it. It was astonishing, in the course ofthe rainiest season in the memory of the oldest Tourangeau, how manyperfect days we found to our hand. The town of Amboise lies, like Tours, on the left bank of the river--a little white-faced town staring acrossan admirable bridge and leaning, behind, as it were, against thepedestal of rock on which the dark castle masses itself. The town is sosmall, the pedestal so big and the castle so high and striking, thatthe clustered houses at the base of the rock are like the crumbs thathave fallen from a well-laden table. You pass among them, however, toascend by a circuit to the château, which you attack, obliquely, frombehind. It is the property of the Comte de Paris, another pretender tothe French throne; having come to him remotely, by inheritance, from hisancestor, the Duc de Penthièvre, who toward the close of the lastcentury bought it from the Crown, which had recovered it after a lapse. Like the castle of Blois, it has been injured and defaced by base uses, but, unlike the castle of Blois, it has not been completely restored. "It is very, very dirty, but very curious"--it is in these terms that Iheard it described by an English lady who was generally to be foundengaged upon a tattered Tauchnitz in the little _salon de lecture_ ofthe hotel at Tours. The description is not inaccurate; but it should besaid that if part of the dirtiness of Amboise is the result of itshaving served for years as a barrack and as a prison, part of it comesfrom the presence of restoring stonemasons, who have woven over aconsiderable portion of it a mask of scaffolding. There is a good dealof neatness as well, and the restoration of some of the parts seemsfinished. This process, at Amboise, consists for the most part simply ofremoving the vulgar excrescences of the last two centuries. The interior is virtually a blank, the old apartments having beenchopped up into small modern rooms; it will have to be completelyreconstructed. A worthy woman with a military profile and that sharp, positive manner which the goodwives who show you through the châteaux ofTouraine are rather apt to have, and in whose high respectability, tosay nothing of the frill of [Illustration: AMBOISE--THE CHÂTEAU] her cap and the cut of her thick brown dress, my companions and Ithought we discovered the particular note, or _nuance_, of Orleanism--acompetent, appreciative, peremptory person, I say--attended us throughthe particularly delightful hour we spent upon the ramparts of Amboise. Denuded and disfeatured within and bristling without with bricklayers'ladders, the place was yet extraordinarily impressive and interesting. Ishould mention that we spent a great deal of time in looking at theview. Sweet was the view, and magnificent; we preferred it so much tocertain portions of the interior, and to occasional effusions ofhistorical information, that the old lady with the profile sometimeslost patience with us. We laid ourselves open to the charge ofpreferring it even to the little chapel of Saint Hubert, which stands onthe edge of the great terrace and has, over the portal, a wonderfulsculpture of the miraculous hunt of that holy man. In the way of plasticart this elaborate scene is the gem of Amboise. It seemed to us that wehad never been in a place where there are so many points of vantage tolook down from. In the matter of position Amboise is certainly supremein the list of perched places; and I say this with a proper recollectionof the claims of Chaumont and of Loches--which latter, by the way (theafterthought is due), is not on the Loire. The platforms, the bastions, the terraces, the high-niched windows and balconies, the hanging gardensand dizzy crenellations, of this complicated structure, keep you inperpetual intercourse with an immense horizon. The great feature of theplace is the obligatory round tower which occupies the northern end ofit, and which has now been completely restored. It is of astoundingsize, a fortress in itself, and contains, instead of a staircase, awonderful inclined plane, so wide and gradual that a coach and four maybe driven to the top. This colossal cylinder has to-day no visible use;but it corresponds, happily enough, with the great circle of theprospect. The gardens of Amboise, lifted high aloft, covering theirregular remnants of the platform on which the castle stands and makingup in picturesqueness what they lack in extent, constitute of course buta scanty domain. But bathed, as we found them, in the autumn sunshineand doubly private from their aerial site, they offered irresistibleopportunities for a stroll interrupted, as one leaned against their lowparapets, by long contemplative pauses. I remember in particular acertain terrace planted with clipped limes upon which we looked downfrom the summit of the big tower. It seemed from that point to beabsolutely necessary to one's happiness to go down and spend the rest ofthe morning there; it was an ideal place to walk to and fro and talk. Our venerable conductress, to whom our relation had gradually becomemore filial, permitted us to gratify this innocent wish--to the extent, that is, of taking a turn or two under the mossy _tilleuls_. At the endof this terrace is the low door, in a wall, against the top of which, in1498, Charles VIII. , according to an accepted tradition, knocked hishead to such good purpose that he died. It was within the walls ofAmboise that his widow, Anne of Brittany, already in mourning for threechildren, two of whom we have seen commemorated in sepulchral marble atTours, spent the first violence of that grief which was presentlydispelled by a union with her husband's cousin and successor, Louis XII. Amboise was a frequent resort of the French Court during the sixteenthcentury; it was here that the young Mary Stuart spent sundry hours ofher first marriage. The wars of religion have left here the ineffaceablestain which they left wherever they passed. An imaginative visitor atAmboise to-day may fancy that the traces of blood are mixed with the redrust on the crossed iron bars of the grim-looking balcony to which theheads of the Huguenots executed on the discovery of the conspiracy of LaRenaudie are rumoured to have been suspended. There was room on thestout balustrade--an admirable piece of work--for a ghastly array. Thesame rumour represents Catherine de'Medici and the young queen aswatching from this balcony the _noyades_ of the captured Huguenots inthe Loire. The facts of history are bad enough; the fictions are, ifpossible, worse; but there is little doubt that the future Queen ofScots learnt the first lessons of life at a horrible school. If insubsequent years she was a prodigy of innocence and virtue, it was notthe fault of her whilom mother-in-law, of her uncles of the house ofGuise, or of the examples presented to her either at the windows of thecastle of Amboise or in its more private recesses. It was difficult tobelieve in these dark deeds, however, as we looked through the goldenmorning at the placidity of the far-shining Loire. The ultimateconsequence of this spectacle was a desire to follow the river as far asthe castle of Chaumont. It is true that the cruelties practised of oldat Amboise might have seemed less phantasmal to persons destined tosuffer from a modern form of inhumanity. The mistress of the little innat the base of the castle-rock--it stands very pleasantly beside theriver, and we had breakfasted there--declared to us that the Château deChaumont, which is often during the autumn closed to visitors, was atthat particular moment standing so wide open to receive us that it wasour duty to hire one of her carriages and drive thither with speed. Thisassurance was so satisfactory that we presently found ourselves seatedin this wily woman's most commodious vehicle and rolling, neither toofast nor too slow, along the margin of the Loire. The drive of about anhour, beneath constant clumps of chestnuts, was charming enough to havebeen taken for itself; and indeed when we reached Chaumont we saw thatour reward was to be simply the usual reward of virtue, theconsciousness of having attempted the right. The Château de Chaumont wasinexorably closed; so we learned from a talkative lodge-keeper, who gavewhat grace she could to her refusal. This good woman's dilemma wasalmost touching; she wished to reconcile two impossibles. The castle wasnot to be visited, for the family of its master was staying there; andyet she was loath to turn away a party of which she was good enough tosay that it had a _grand genre_; for, as she also remarked, she had herliving to earn. She tried to arrange a compromise, one of the elementsof which was that we should descend from our carriage and trudge up ahill which would bring us to a designated point where, over the palingof the garden, we might obtain an oblique and surreptitious view of asmall portion of the castle walls. This suggestion led us to inquire (ofeach other) to what degree of baseness it is lawful for an enlightenedlover of the picturesque to resort in order not to have a blank page inhis collection. One of our trio decided characteristically against anyform of derogation; so she sat in the carriage and sketched some objectthat was public property while her two companions, who were not soproud, trudged up a muddy ascent which formed a kind of back-stairs. Itis perhaps no more than they deserved that they were disappointed. Chaumont is feudal, if you please; but the modern spirit is inpossession. It forms a vast clean-scraped mass, with big round towers, ungarnished with a leaf of ivy or a patch of moss, surrounded by gardensof moderate extent (save where the muddy lane of which I speak passesnear it), and looking rather like an enormously magnified villa. Thegreat merit of Chaumont is its position, which almost exactly resemblesthat of Amboise; it sweeps the river up and down and seems to look overhalf the province. This, however, was better appreciated as, aftercoming down the hill and re-entering the carriage, we drove across thelong suspension-bridge which crosses the Loire just beyond the villageand over which we made our way to the small station of Onzain, at thefarther end, to take the train back to Tours. Look back from the middleof this bridge; the whole picture composes, as the painters say. Thetowers, the pinnacles, the fair front of the château, perched above itsfringe of garden and the rusty roofs of the village and facing theafternoon sky, which is reflected also in the great stream that sweepsbelow, all this makes a contribution to your happiest memories ofTouraine. [Illustration] Chapter vii [Chenonceaux] We never went to Chinon; it was a fatality. We planned it a dozen times;but the weather interfered, or the trains didn't suit, or one of theparty was fatigued with the adventures of the day before. This excursionwas so much postponed that it was finally postponed to everything. Besides, we had to go to Chenonceaux, to Azay-le-Rideau, to Langeais, toLoches. So I have not the memory of Chinon; I have only the regret. Butregret, as well as memory, has its visions; especially when, likememory, it is assisted by photographs. The castle of Chinon in this formappears to me as an enormous ruin, a mediæval fortress of the extentalmost of a city. It covers a hill above the Vienne, and after beingimpregnable in its time is indestructible to-day. (I risk this phrase inthe face of the prosaic truth. Chinon, in the days when it was a prize, more than once suffered capture, and at present it is crumbling inch byinch. It is apparent, however, I believe, that these inches encroachlittle upon acres of masonry. ) It was in the castle that Jeanne Dare hadher first interview with Charles VII. , and it is in the town thatFrançois Rabelais is supposed to have been born. To the castle, moreover, the lover of the picturesque is earnestly recommended todirect his steps. But one always misses something, and I would ratherhave missed Chinon than Chenonceaux. Fortunate exceedingly were the fewhours we passed on the spot on which we missed nothing. "In 1747, " says Jean-Jacques Rousseau in his "Confessions, " "we went tospend the autumn in Touraine, at the Château of Chenonceaux, a royalresidence upon the Cher, built by Henry II. For Diana of Poitiers, whoseinitials are still to be seen there, and now in possession of M. Dupin, the farmer-general. We amused ourselves greatly at this fine place; theliving was of the best, and I became as fat as a monk. We made a greatdeal of music and acted comedies. " This is the only description that Rousseau gives of one of the mostromantic houses in France and of an episode that must have counted asone of the most agreeable in his uncomfortable career. The eighteenthcentury contented itself with general epithets; and when Jean-Jacqueshas said that Chenonceaux was a "beau lieu, " he thinks himself absolvedfrom further characterisation. We later sons of time have, both for ourpleasure and our pain, invented the fashion of special terms, and I amafraid that even common decency obliges me to pay some larger tributethan this to the architectural gem of Touraine. Fortunately I candischarge my debt with gratitude. In going from Tours you leave thevalley of the Loire and enter that of the Cher, and at the end of aboutan hour you see the turrets of the castle on your right, among thetrees, down in the meadows, beside the quiet little river. The stationand the village are about ten minutes' walk from the château, and thevillage contains a very tidy inn, where, if you are not in too great ahurry to commune with the shades of the royal favourite and the jealousqueen, you will perhaps stop and order a dinner to be ready for you inthe evening. A straight, tall avenue leads to the grounds of the castle;what I owe to exactitude compels me to add that it is crossed by therailway-line. The place is so arranged, however, that the château needknow nothing of passing trains--which pass, indeed, though the groundsare not large, at a very sufficient distance. I may add that the trainsthroughout this part of France have a noiseless, desultory, dawdling, almost stationary quality, which makes them less of an offence thanusual. It was a Sunday afternoon and the light was yellow save under thetrees of the avenue, where, in spite of the waning of September, it wasduskily green. Three or four peasants, in festal attire, were strollingabout. On a bench at the beginning of the avenue sat a man with twowomen. As I advanced with my companions he rose, after a sudden stare, and approached me with a smile in which (to be Johnsonian for a moment)certitude was mitigated by modesty and eagerness was embellished withrespect. He came toward me with a salutation that I had seen before, andI am happy to say that after an instant I ceased to be guilty of thebrutality of not knowing where. There was only one place in the worldwhere people smile like that, only one place where the art of salutationhas that perfect grace. This excellent creature used to crook his arm, [Illustration: CHENONCEAUX] in Venice, when I stepped into my gondola; and I now laid my hand onthat member with the familiarity of glad recognition; for it was onlysurprise that had kept me even for a moment from accepting the genialFrancesco as an ornament of the landscape of Touraine. What onearth--the phrase is the right one--was a Venetian gondolier doing atChenonceaux? He had been brought from Venice, gondola and all, by themistress of the charming house, to paddle about on the Cher. Our meetingwas affectionate, though there was a kind of violence in seeing him sofar from home. He was too well dressed, too well fed; he had grownstout, and his nose had the tinge of good claret. He remarked that thelife of the household to which he had the honour to belong was that of a_casa regia_; which must have been a great change for poor Checco, whosehabits in Venice were not regal. However, he was the sympathetic Checcostill; and for five minutes after I left him I thought less about thelittle pleasure-house by the Cher than about the palaces of theAdriatic. But attention was not long in coming round to the charming structurethat presently rose before us. The pale yellow front of the château, thesmall scale of which is at first a surprise, rises beyond a considerablecourt, at the entrance of which a massive and detached round tower, witha turret on its brow (a relic of the building that preceded the actualvilla), appears to keep guard. This court is not enclosed--or isenclosed at least only by the gardens, portions of which are at presentin process of radical readjustment. Therefore, though Chenonceaux has nogreat height, its delicate façade stands up boldly enough. This façade, one of the most finished things in Touraine, consists of two storeys, surmounted by an attic which, as so often in the buildings of theFrench Renaissance, is the richest part of the house. The high-pitchedroof contains three windows of beautiful design, covered withembroidered caps and flowering into crocketed spires. The window abovethe door is deeply niched; it opens upon a balcony made in the form of adouble pulpit--one of the most charming features of the front. Chenonceaux is not large, as I say, but into its delicate compass ispacked a great deal of history--history which differs from that ofAmboise and Blois in being of the private and sentimental kind. Theechoes of the place, faint and far as they are to-day, are notpolitical, but personal. Chenonceaux dates, as a residence, from theyear 1515, when the shrewd Thomas Bohier, a public functionary who hadgrown rich in handling the finances of Normandy and had acquired theestate from a family which, after giving it many feudal lords, hadfallen into poverty, erected the present structure on the foundations ofan old mill. The design is attributed, with I know not what justice, toPierre Nepveu, _alias_ Trinqueau, the audacious architect of Chambord. On the death of Bohier the house passed to his son, who, however, wasforced, under cruel pressure, to surrender it to the Crown incompensation for a so-called deficit in the official accounts of thisrash parent and predecessor. Francis I. Held the place till his death;but Henry II. , on ascending the throne, presented it out of hand to thatmature charmer, the admired of two generations, Diana of Poitiers. Dianaenjoyed it till the death of her protector; but when this event occurredthe widow of the monarch, who had been obliged to submit in silence, foryears, to the ascendency of a rival, took the most pardonable of all therevenges with which the name of Catherine de'Medici is associated andturned her out of doors. Diana was not in want of refuges, Catherinewent through the form of giving her Chaumont in exchange; but there wasonly one Chenonceaux. Catherine devoted herself to making the place morecompletely unique. The feature that renders it sole of its kind is notappreciated till you wander round to either side of the house. If acertain springing lightness is the characteristic of Chenonceaux, if itbears in every line the aspect of a place of recreation--a placeintended for delicate, chosen pleasures--nothing can confirm thisexpression better than the strange, unexpected movement with which, frombehind, it carries itself across the river. The earlier building standsin the water; it had inherited the foundations of the mill destroyed byThomas Bohier. The first step therefore had been taken upon solid pilesof masonry; and the ingenious Catherine--she was a _raffinée_--simplyproceeded to take the others. She continued the piles to the oppositebank of the Cher, and over them she threw a long, straight gallery oftwo tiers. This part of the château, which mainly resembles a housebuilt upon a bridge and occupying its entire length, is of course thegreat curiosity of Chenonceaux. It forms on each floor a charmingcorridor, which, within, is illuminated from either side by theflickering river-light. The architecture of these galleries, seen fromwithout, is less elegant than that of the main building, but the aspectof the whole thing is delightful. I have spoken of Chenonceaux as a"villa, " using the word advisedly, for the place is neither a castle nora palace. It is a very exceptional villa, but it has thevilla-quality--the look of being intended for life in common. This lookis not at all contradicted by the wing across the Cher, which onlysuggests indoor perspectives and intimate pleasures--walks in pairs onrainy days; games and dances on autumn nights; together with as much asmay be of moonlighted dialogue (or silence) in the course of eveningsmore genial still, in the well-marked recesses of windows. It is safe to say that such things took place there in the last century, during the kindly reign of Monsieur and Madame Dupin. This periodpresents itself as the happiest in the annals of Chenonceaux. I know notwhat festive train the great Diana may have led, and my imagination, Iam afraid, is only feebly kindled by the records of the luxuriouspastimes organised on the banks of the Cher by that terrible daughter ofthe Medici whose appreciation of the good things of life was perfectlyconsistent with a failure to perceive why others should live to enjoythem. The best society that ever assembled there was collected atChenonceaux during the middle of the eighteenth century. This wassurely, in France at least, the age of good society, the period when the"right people" made every haste to be born in time. Such people must ofcourse have belonged to the fortunate few--not to the miserable many;for if a society be large enough to be good, it must also be smallenough. The sixty years that preceded the Revolution were the golden ageof fireside talk and of those amenities that proceed from the presenceof women in whom the social art is both instinctive and acquired. Thewomen of that period were, above all, good company; the fact is attestedin a thousand documents. Chenonceaux offered a perfect setting to freeconversation; and infinite joyous discourse must have mingled with theliquid murmur of the Cher. Claude Dupin was not only a great man ofbusiness, but a man of honour and a patron of knowledge; and his wifewas gracious, clever, and wise. They had acquired this famous propertyby purchase (from one of the Bourbons, as Chenonceaux, for two centuriesafter the death of Catherine de'Medici, remained constantly in princelyhands), and it was transmitted to their son, Dupin de Francueil, grandfather of Madame George Sand. This lady, in her Correspondence, lately published, describes a visit that she paid more than thirty yearsago to those members of her family who were still in possession. Theowner of Chenonceaux to-day[a] is the daughter of an Englishmannaturalised in France. But I have wandered far from my story, which issimply a sketch of the surface of the place. Seen obliquely, from eitherside, in combination with its bridge and gallery, the structure issingular and fantastic, a striking example of a wilful and capriciousconception. Unfortunately all caprices are not so graceful andsuccessful, and I grudge the honour of this one to the false andblood-polluted Catherine. (To be exact, I believe the arches of thebridge were laid by the elderly Diana. It was Catherine, however, whocompleted the monument. ) Within, the house has been, as usual, restored. The staircases and ceilings, in all the old royal residences of thispart of France, are the parts that have suffered least; many of themhave still much of the life of the old time about them. Some of thechambers of Chenonceaux, however, encumbered as they are with moderndetail, derive a sufficiently haunted and suggestive look from the deepsetting of their beautiful windows, which thickens the shadows and makesdark corners. There is a charming little Gothic chapel, with its apsehanging over the water, fastened to the left flank of the house. Some ofthe upper balconies, which look along the outer face of the gallery andeither up or down the river, are delightful protected nooks. We walkedthrough the lower gallery to the other bank of the Cher; this fineapartment appeared to be for the moment a purgatory of ancientfurniture. It terminates rather abruptly; it simply stops, with a blankwall. There ought, of course, to have been a pavilion here, though Iprefer very much the old defect to any modern remedy. The wall is not soblank, however, but that it contains a door which opens on a rustydrawbridge. This drawbridge traverses the small gap which divides theend of the gallery from the bank of the stream. The house, therefore, does not literally rest on opposite edges of the Cher, but rests on oneand just fails to rest on the other. The pavilion would have made thatup; but after a moment we ceased to miss this imaginary feature. Wepassed the little drawbridge, and wandered awhile beside the river. Fromthis opposite bank the mass of the château looked more charming thanever; and the little peaceful, lazy Cher, where two or three men werefishing in the eventide, flowed under the clear arches and between thesolid pedestals of the part that spanned it, with the softest, vaguestlight on its bosom. This was the right perspective; we were lookingacross the river of time. The whole scene was deliciously mild. The mooncame up; we passed back through the gallery and strolled about a littlelonger in the gardens. It was very still. I met my old gondolier in thetwilight. He showed me his gondola, but I hated, somehow, to see itthere. I don't like, as the French say, to _mêler les genres_. A gondolain a little flat French river? The image was not less irritating, ifless injurious, than the spectacle of a steamer in the Grand Canal, which had driven me away from Venice a year and a half before. We tookour way back to the Bon Laboureur, and waited in the little inn-parlourfor a late train to Tours. We were not impatient, for we had anexcellent dinner to occupy us; and even after we had dined we were stillcontent to sit awhile and exchange remarks upon the superiorcivilisation of France. Where else, at a village inn, should we havefared so well? Where else should we have sat down to our refreshmentwithout condescension? There were a couple of countries in which itwould not have been happy for us to arrive hungry, on a Sunday evening, at so modest an hostelry. At the little inn at Chenonceaux the _cuisine_was not only excellent, but the service was graceful. We were waited onby mademoiselle and her mamma; it was so that mademoiselle alluded tothe elder lady as she uncorked for us a bottle of Vouvray mousseux. Wewere very comfortable, very genial; we even went so far as to say toeach other that Vouvray mousseux was a delightful wine. From thisopinion indeed one of our trio differed; but this member of the partyhad already exposed herself to the charge of being too fastidious bydeclining to descend from the carriage at Chaumont and take thatback-stairs view of the castle. [a] 1884. [Illustration] Chapter viii [Azay-le-Rideau] Without fastidiousness it was fair to declare on the other hand that thelittle inn at Azay-le-Rideau was very bad. It was terribly dirty and itwas in charge of a fat _mégère_ whom the appearance of four trustfultravellers--we were four, with an illustrious fourth, on thatoccasion--roused apparently to fury. I attached great importance to thisincongruous hostess, for she uttered the only uncivil words I heardspoken (in connection with any business of my own) during a tour of somesix weeks in France. Breakfast not at Azay-le-Rideau therefore, tootrustful traveller; or if you do so, be either very meek or very bold. Breakfast not, save under stress of circumstance; but let nocircumstance whatever prevent your going to see the great house of theplace, which is a fair rival to Chenonceaux. The village lies close tothe gates, though after you pass these gates you leave it well behind. Alittle avenue, as at Chenonceaux, leads to the castle, [Illustration: AZAY-LE-RIDEAU] making a pretty vista as you approach the sculptured doorway. Azay is amost perfect and beautiful thing; I should place it third in any list ofthe great houses of this part of France in which these houses should beranked according to charm. For beauty of detail it comes after Blois andChenonceaux, but it comes before Amboise and Chambord. On the otherhand, of course it is inferior in majesty to either of these vaststructures. Like Chenonceaux, it is a watery place, though it is moremeagrely moated than the small château on the Cher. It consists of alarge square _corps de logis_, with a round tower at each angle, risingout of a somewhat too slumberous pond. The water--the water of theIndre--surrounds it, but it is only on one side that it bathes its feetin the moat. On one of the others stretches a little terrace, treated asa garden, and in front prevails a wide court formed by a wing which, onthe right, comes forward. This front, covered with sculptures, is of therichest, stateliest effect. The court is approached by a bridge over thepond, and the house would reflect itself in this wealth of water if thewater were a trifle less opaque. But there is a certain stagnation--itaffects more, senses than one--about the picturesque pools of Azay. Onthe hither side of the bridge is a garden overshadowed by fine oldsycamores--a garden shut in by greenhouses and by a fine last-centurygateway flanked with twin lodges. Beyond the château and the standingwaters behind it is a so-called _parc_, which, however, it must beconfessed, has little of park-like beauty. The old houses--a largenumber--remain in France; but the old timber does not remain, and thedenuded aspect of the few acres that surround the châteaux of Touraineis pitiful to the traveller who has learned to take the measure of suchthings from the country of "stately homes. " The garden-ground of thelordly Chaumont is that of an English suburban villa; and in that and inother places there is little suggestion, in the untended aspect of walkand lawns, of the gardener the British Islands know. The manor as we seeit dates from the early part of the sixteenth century; and theindustrious Abbé Chevalier, in his very entertaining though slightlyrose-coloured book on Touraine, [b] speaks of it as "perhaps the purestexpression of the _belle Renaissance françoise_. " "Its height, " he goeson "is divided between two storeys, terminating under the roof in aprojecting entablature which imitates a row of machicolations. Carvenchimneys and tall dormer windows, covered with imagery, rise from theroofs; turrets on brackets, of elegant shape, hang with the greatestlightness from the angles of the building. The soberness of the mainlines, the harmony of the empty spaces and those that are filled out, the prominence of the crowning parts, the delicacy of all the details, constitute an enchanting whole. " And then the Abbé speaks of theadmirable staircase which adorns the north front and which, with itsextension inside, constitutes the principal treasure of Azay. Thestaircase passes beneath one of the richest of porticos--a portico overwhich a monumental salamander indulges in the most decorativecontortions. The sculptured vaults of stone which cover the windings ofthe staircase within, the fruits, flowers, ciphers, heraldic signs, areof the noblest effect. The interior of the château is rich, comfortable, extremely modern; but it makes no picture that compares with itsexternal face, about which, with its charming proportions, its profuseyet not extravagant sculpture, there is something very tranquil andpure. [b] "Promenades pittoresques en Touraine. " Tours: 1869. I took a particular fancy to the roof, high, steep, old, with its slopeof bluish slate, and the way the weather-worn chimneys seemed to growout of it--living things in a deep soil. The single defect of the houseis the blankness and bareness of its walls, which have none of thatdelicate parasitic deposit that agrees so well--to the eye--with thesurface of old dwellings. It is true that this bareness results in akind of silvery whiteness of complexion which carries out the tone ofthe quiet pools and even that of the scanty and shadeless park. [Illustration] Chapter ix [Langeais] I hardly know what to say about the tone of Langeais, which, though Ihave left it to the end of my sketch, formed the objective point of thefirst excursion I made from Tours. Langeais is rather dark and grey; itis perhaps the simplest and most severe of all the castles of the Loire. I don't know why I should have gone to see it before any other, unlessit be because I remembered that Duchesse de Langeais who figures inseveral of Balzac's novels, and found this association very potent. TheDuchesse de Langeais is a somewhat transparent fiction; but the castlefrom which Balzac borrowed the title of his heroine is an extremelysolid fact. My doubt just above as to whether I should pronounce itexceptionally grey came from my having seen it under a sky which mademost things look dark. I have, however, a very kindly memory of thatmoist and melancholy afternoon, which was much more autumnal than manyof the days that followed it. Langeais lies down the Loire, near theriver, on the opposite side from Tours, and to go to it you will spendhalf an hour in the train. You pass on the way the Château de Luynes, which, with its round towers catching the afternoon light, looksuncommonly well on a hill at a distance; you pass also the ruins of thecastle of Cinq-Mars, the ancestral dwelling of the young favourite ofLouis XIII. , the victim of Richelieu, the hero of Alfred de Vigny'snovel, which is usually recommended to young ladies engaged in the studyof French. Langeais is very imposing and decidedly sombre; it marks thetransition from the architecture of defence to that of elegance. Itrises, massive and perpendicular, out of the centre of the village towhich it gives its name and which it entirely dominates; so that as youstand before it in the crooked and empty street there is no resource foryou but to stare up at its heavy overhanging cornice and at the hugetowers surmounted with extinguishers of slate. If you follow this streetto the end, however, you encounter in abundance the usual embellishmentsof a French village: little ponds or tanks, with women on their knees onthe brink, pounding and thumping a lump of saturated linen; brown oldcrones, the tone of whose facial hide makes their nightcaps (worn byday) look dazzling; little alleys perforating the thickness of a row ofcottages and showing you behind, as a glimpse, the vividness of a greengarden. In the rear of the castle rises a hill which must formerly havebeen occupied by some of its appurtenances and which indeed is stillpartly enclosed within its court. You may walk round this eminence, which, with the small houses of the village at its base, shuts in thecastle from behind. The enclosure is not defiantly guarded, however; fora small, rough path, which you presently reach, leads up to an opengate. This gate admits you to a vague and rather limited _parc_, whichcovers the crest of the hill and through which you may walk into thegardens of the castle. These gardens, of small extent, confront the darkwalls with their brilliant parterres and, covering the gradual slope ofthe hill, form, as it were, the fourth side of the court. This is thestateliest view of the structure, which looks to you sufficiently grimand grey as, after asking leave of a neat young woman who sallies out tolearn your errand, you sit there on a garden bench and take the measureof the three tall towers attached to this inner front and formingseverally the cage of a staircase. The huge bracketed cornice (one ofthe features of Langeais), which is merely ornamental, as it is notmachicolated, though it looks so, is continued on the inner face aswell. The whole thing has a fine feudal air, though it was erected onthe ruins of feudalism. The main event in the history of the castle is the marriage of Anne ofBrittany to her first husband, Charles VIII. , which took place in itsgreat hall in 1491. Into this great hall we were introduced by the neatyoung woman--into this great hall and into sundry other halls, windingstaircases, galleries, chambers. The cicerone of Langeais is in toogreat a hurry; the fact is pointed out in the excellent Guide-Joanne. This ill-dissimulated vice, however, is to be observed, in the countryof the Loire, in every one who carries a key. It is true that atLangeais there is no great occasion to indulge in the tourist's weaknessof dawdling; for the apartments, though they contain many curious oddsand ends of antiquity, are not of first-rate interest. They are cold andmusty indeed, with that touching smell of old furniture, as allapartments should be through which the insatiate American wanders inthe rear of a bored domestic, pausing to stare at a faded tapestry or toread the name on the frame of some simpering portrait. To return to Tours my companion and I had counted on a train which (asis not uncommon in France) existed only in the "Indicateur des Cheminsde Fer;" and instead of waiting for another we engaged a vehicle to takeus home. A sorry _carriole_ or _patache_ it proved to be, with theaccessories of a lumbering white mare and a little wizened, ancientpeasant, who had put on, in honour of the occasion, a new blouse ofextraordinary stiffness and blueness. We hired the trap of an energeticwoman, who put it "to" with her own hands; women in Touraine and theBlésois appearing to have the best of it in the business of lettingvehicles, as well as in many other industries. There is, in fact, nobranch of human activity in which one is not liable, in France, to finda woman engaged. Women, indeed, are not priests; but priests are, moreor less, women. They are not in the army, it may be said but then they_are_ the army. They are very formidable. In France one must count withthe women. The drive back from Langeais to Tours was long, slow, cold;we had an occasional spatter of rain. But the road passes most of theway close to the Loire, and there was something in our jog-trot throughthe darkening land, beside the flowing river, which it was very possibleto enjoy. [Illustration] Chapter x [Loches] The consequence of my leaving to the last my little mention of Loches isthat space and opportunity fail me; and yet a brief and hurried accountof that extraordinary spot would after all be in best agreement with myvisit. We snatched a fearful joy, my companion and I, the afternoon wetook the train for Loches. The weather this time had been terriblyagainst us: again and again a day that promised fair became hopelesslyfoul after lunch. At last we determined that if we could not make thisexcursion in the sunshine we would make it with the aid of ourumbrellas. We grasped them firmly and started for the station, where wewere detained an unconscionable time by the evolutions, outside, ofcertain trains laden with liberated (and exhilarated) conscripts, who, their term of service ended, were about to be restored to civil life. The trains in Touraine are provoking; they [Illustration: LOCHES] serve as little as possible for excursions. If they convey you one wayat the right hour, it is on the condition of bringing you back at thewrong; they either allow you far too little time to examine the castleor the ruin, or they leave you planted in front of it for periods thatoutlast curiosity. They are perverse, capricious, exasperating. It was aquestion of our having but an hour or two at Loches, and we could illafford to sacrifice to accidents. One of the accidents, however, wasthat the rain stopped before we got there, leaving behind it a moistmildness of temperature and a cool and lowering sky which were inperfect agreement with the grey old city. Loches is certainly one of thegreatest impressions of the traveller in central France--the largestcluster of curious things that presents itself to his sight. It risesabove the valley of the Indre, the charming stream set in meadows andsedges, which wanders through the province of Berry and through many ofthe novels of Madame George Sand; lifting from the summit of a hill, which it covers to the base, a confusion of terraces, ramparts, towers, and spires. Having but little time, as I say, we scaled the hill amainand wandered briskly through this labyrinth of antiquities. The rain haddecidedly stopped and, save that we had our train on our minds, we sawLoches to the best advantage. We enjoyed that sensation with which theconscientious tourist is--or ought to be--well acquainted and for which, at any rate, he has a formula in his rough-and-ready language. We"experienced, " as they say (most irregular of verbs), an "agreeabledisappointment. " We were surprised and delighted; we had for some reasonsuspected that Loches was scarce good. I hardly know what is best there: the strange and impressive littlecollegial church, with its romanesque atrium or narthex, its doorwayscovered with primitive sculpture of the richest kind, its treasure of aso-called pagan altar embossed with fighting warriors, its threepyramidal domes, so unexpected, so sinister, which I have not metelsewhere in church architecture; or the huge square keep of theeleventh century--the most cliff-like tower I remember, whoseimmeasurable thickness I did not penetrate; or the subterraneanmysteries of two other less striking but not less historic dungeons, into which a terribly imperative little cicerone introduced us, with theaid of downward ladders, ropes, torches, warnings, extended hands, andmany fearful anecdotes--all in impervious darkness. These horribleprisons of Loches, at an incredible distance below daylight, enlivenedthe consciousness of Louis XI. And were for the most part, I believe, constructed by him. One of the towers of the castle is garnished withthe hooks or supports of the celebrated iron cage in which he confinedthe Cardinal La Balue, who survived so much longer than might have beenexpected this extraordinary mixture of seclusion and exposure. All thesethings form part of the castle of Loches, whose enormous _enceinte_covers the whole of the top of the hill and abounds in dismantledgateways, in crooked passages, in winding lanes that lead to posterndoors, in long façades that look upon terraces interdicted to thevisitor, who perceives with irritation that they command magnificentviews. These views are the property of the sub-prefect of thedepartment, who resides at the Château de Loches and who has also theenjoyment of a garden--a garden compressed and curtailed, as those ofold castles that perch on hill-tops are apt to be--containing ahorse-chestnut tree of fabulous size, [Illustration: LOCHES--THE CHURCH] a tree of a circumference so vast and so perfect that the wholepopulation of Loches might sit in concentric rows beneath its boughs. The gem of the place, however, is neither the big _marronier_, nor thecollegial church, nor the mighty dungeon, nor the hideous prisons ofLouis XI. ; it is simply the tomb of Agnes Sorel, _la belle des belles_, so many years the mistress of Charles VII. She was buried in 1450, inthe collegial church, whence, in the beginning of the present century, her remains, with the monument that marks them, were transferred to oneof the towers of the castle. She has always, I know not with whatjustice, enjoyed a fairer fame than most ladies who have occupied herposition, and this fairness is expressed in the delicate statue thatsurmounts her tomb. It represents her lying there in lovely demureness, her hands folded with the best modesty, a little kneeling angel ateither side of her head, and her feet, hidden in the folds of her decentrobe, resting upon a pair of couchant lambs, innocent reminders of hername. Agnes, however, was not lamb-like, inasmuch as, according topopular tradition at least, she exerted herself sharply in favour of theexpulsion of the English from France. It is one of the suggestions ofLoches that the young Charles VII. , hard put to it as he was for atreasury and a capital--"le roi de Bourges, " he was called at Paris--wasyet a rather privileged mortal, to stand up as he does before posteritybetween the noble Joan and the _gentille Agnes_; deriving, however, muchmore honour from one of these companions than from the other. Almost asdelicate a relic of antiquity as this fascinating tomb is the exquisiteoratory of Anne of Brittany, among the apartments of the castle the onlychamber worthy of note. This small room, hardly larger than a closet, and forming part of the addition made to the edifice by Charles VIII. , is embroidered over with the curious and remarkably decorative device ofthe ermine and festooned cord. The objects in themselves are notespecially graceful, but the constant repetition of the figure on thewalls and ceiling produces an effect of richness in spite of the modernwhitewash with which, if I remember rightly, they have been endued. Thelittle streets of Loches wander crookedly down the hill and are full ofcharming pictorial "bits:" an old town-gate, passing under a medievaltower, which is ornamented by Gothic windows and the empty niches ofstatues; a meagre but delicate _hotel de ville_ of the Renaissancenestling close beside it; a curious _chancellerie_ of the middle of thesixteenth century, with mythological figures and a Latin inscription onthe front--both of these latter buildings being rather unexpectedfeatures of the huddled and precipitous little town. Loches has a suburbon the other side of the Indre, which we had contented ourselves withlooking down at from the heights while we wondered whether, even if ithad not been getting late and our train were more accommodating, weshould care to take our way across the bridge and look up that bust interra-cotta of Francis I. Which is the principal ornament of the Châteaude Sansac and the faubourg of Beaulieu. I think we decided that weshould not, that we had already often measured the longest nose inhistory. [Illustration] Chapter xi [Bourges] I know not whether the exact limits of an excursion as distinguishedfrom a journey have ever been fixed; at any rate, it seemed none of mybusiness at Tours to settle the question. Therefore, though the makingof excursions had been the purpose of my stay, I thought it vain, whileI started for Bourges, to determine to which category that littleexpedition might belong. It was not till the third day that I returnedto Tours; and the distance, traversed for the most part after dark, waseven greater than I had supposed. That, however, was partly the fault ofa tiresome wait at Vierzon, where I had more than enough time to dine, very badly, at the _buffet_ and to observe the proceedings of a familywho had entered my railway carriage at Tours and had conversedunreservedly, for my benefit, all the way from that station--a familywhom it entertained me to assign to the class of _petite noblesse deprovince_. Their noble origin was confirmed by the way they all "made_maigre_" in the refreshment-room (it happened to be a Friday), as if ithad been possible to do anything else. They ate two or three omeletsapiece and ever so many little cakes, while the positive, talkativemother watched her children as the waiter handed about the roast fowl. Iwas destined to share the secrets of this family to the end; for while Itook my place in the empty train that was in waiting to convey us toBourges the same vigilant woman pushed them all on top of me into mycompartment, though the carriages on either side contained no travellersat all. It was better, I found, to have dined (even on omelets andlittle cakes) at the station at Vierzon than at the hotel at Bourges, which, when I reached it at nine o'clock at night, did not strike me asthe prince of hotels. The inns in the smaller provincial towns in Franceare all, as the term is, commercial, and the _commis-voyageur_ is intriumphant possession. I saw a great deal of him for several weeks afterthis; for he was apparently the only traveller in the southernprovinces, and it was my daily fate to sit opposite to him at tablesd'hôte and in railway trains. He may be known by two infalliblesigns--his hands are fat and he tucks his napkin into his shirt-collar. In spite of these idiosyncrasies, he seemed to me a reserved andinoffensive person, with singularly little of the demonstrativegood-humour that he has been described as possessing. I saw no one whoreminded me of Balzac's "illustre Gaudissart;" and indeed in the courseof a month's journey through a large part of France I heard so littledesultory conversation that I wondered whether a change had not comeover the spirit of the people. They seemed to me as silent as Americanswhen Americans have not been "introduced, " and infinitely less addictedto exchanging remarks in railway trains and at tables d'hôte than thecolloquial and cursory English; a fact perhaps not worth mentioning wereit not at variance with that reputation which the French have longenjoyed of being a pre-eminently sociable nation. The common report ofthe character of a people is, however, an indefinable product, and isapt to strike the traveller who observes for himself as very wide of themark. The English, who have for ages been described (mainly by theFrench) as the dumb stiff, unapproachable race, present to-day aremarkable appearance of good-humour and garrulity and are distinguishedby their facility of intercourse. On the other hand, any one who hasseen half-a-dozen Frenchmen pass a whole day together in arailway-carriage without breaking silence is forced to believe that thetraditional reputation of these gentlemen is simply the survival of someprimitive formula. It was true, doubtless, before the Revolution; butthere have been great changes since then. The question of which is thebetter taste, to talk to strangers or to hold your tongue, is a matterapart; I incline to believe that the French reserve is the result of amore definite conception of social behaviour. I allude to it onlybecause it is at variance with the national fame and at the same timecompatible with a very easy view of life in certain other directions. Onsome of these latter points the Boule d'Or at Bourges was full ofinstruction; boasting as it did of a hall of reception in which, amidold boots that had been brought to be cleaned, old linen that was beingsorted for the wash, and lamps of evil odour that were awaitingreplenishment, a strange, familiar, promiscuous household life wentforward. Small scullions in white caps and aprons slept upon greasybenches; the Boots sat staring at you while you fumbled, helpless, in arow of pigeon-holes, for your candlestick or your key; and, amid thecoming and going of the _commis-voyageurs_, a little sempstress bentover the under-garments of the hostess--the latter being a heavy, stern, silent woman, who looked at people very hard. [Bourges: the Cathedral] It was not to be looked at in that manner that one had come all the wayfrom Tours; so that within ten minutes after my arrival I sallied outinto the darkness to form somehow and somewhere a happier relation. However late in the evening I may arrive at a place, I never go to bedwithout my impression. The natural place at Bourges to look for itseemed to be the cathedral; which, moreover, was the only thing thatcould account for my presence _dans cette galère_. I turned out of asmall square in front of the hotel and walked up a narrow, slopingstreet paved with big, rough stones and guiltless of a footway. It was asplendid starlight night; the stillness of a sleeping _ville deprovince_ was over everything; I had the whole place to myself. I turnedto my right, at the top of the street, where presently a short, vaguelane brought me into sight of the cathedral. I approached it obliquely, from behind; it loomed up in the darkness above me enormous and sublime. It stands on the top of the large but not lofty eminence over whichBourges is scattered--a very good position as French cathedrals go, forthey are not all so nobly situated as Chartres and Laon. On the side onwhich I approached it (the south) it is tolerably well exposed, thoughthe precinct is shabby; in front, it is rather too much shut in. Thesedefects, however, it makes up for on the north side and behind, where itpresents itself in the most admirable manner to the garden of theArchevêché, which has been arranged as a public walk, with the usualformal alleys of the _jardin français_. I must add that I appreciatedthese points only on the following day. As I stood there in the light ofthe stars, many of which had an autumnal sharpness, while others wereshooting over the heavens, the huge, rugged vessel of the churchoverhung me in very much the same way as the black hull of a ship at seawould overhang a solitary swimmer. It seemed colossal, stupendous, adark leviathan. The next morning, which was lovely, I lost no time in going back to it, and found with satisfaction that the daylight did it no injury. Thecathedral of Bourges is indeed magnificently huge, and if it is a gooddeal wanting in lightness and grace, it is perhaps only the moreimposing. I read in the excellent handbook of M. Joanne that it wasprojected "_dès_ 1172, " but commenced only in the first years of thethirteenth century. "The nave, " the writer adds, "was finished _tantbien que mal, faute de ressources_; the façade is of the thirteenth andfourteenth centuries in its lower part, and of the fourteenth in itsupper. " The allusion to the nave means the omission of the transepts. The west front consists of two vast but imperfect towers; one of which(the south) is immensely buttressed, so that its outline slopes forwardlike that of a pyramid. This is the taller of the two. If they hadspires these towers would be prodigious; as it is, given the rest of thechurch, they are wanting in elevation. There are five deeply recessedportals, all in a row, each surmounted with a gable, the gable over thecentral door being exceptionally high. Above the porches, which give themeasure of its width, the front rears itself, piles itself, on a great scale, carried up by galleries, arches, windows, sculptures, and supported by the extraordinarily thickbuttresses of which I have spoken and which, though they embellish itwith deep shadows thrown sidewise, do not improve its style. Theportals, especially the middle one, are extremely interesting; they arecovered with curious early sculptures. The middle one, however, I mustdescribe alone. It has no less than six rows of figures--the others havefour--some of which, notably the upper one, are still in their places. The arch at the top has three tiers of elaborate imagery. The upper ofthese is divided by the figure of Christ in judgment, of great size, stiff and terrible, with outstretched arms. On either side of him areranged three or four angels, with the instruments of the Passion. Beneath him in the second frieze stands the angel of justice with thescales; and on either side of him is the vision of the last judgment. The good prepare, with infinite titillation and complacency, to ascendto the skies; while the bad are dragged, pushed, hurled, stuffed, crammed, into pits and caldrons of fire. There is a charming detail inthis section. Beside the angel, on the right, where the wicked are theprey of demons, stands a little female figure, that of a child, who, with hands meekly folded and head gently raised, waits for the sternangel to decide upon her fate. In this fate, however, a dreadful bigdevil also takes a keen interest: he seems on the point of appropriatingthe tender creature; he has a face like a goat and an enormous hookednose. But the angel gently lays a hand upon the shoulder of the littlegirl--the movement is full of dignity--as if to say: "No; she belongs tothe other side. " The frieze below represents the general resurrection, with the good and the wicked emerging from their sepulchres. Nothingcan be more quaint and charming than the difference shown in their wayof responding to the final trump. The good get out of their tombs with acertain modest gaiety, an alacrity tempered by respect; one of themkneels to pray as soon as he has disinterred himself. You may know thewicked, on the other hand, by their extreme shyness; they crawl outslowly and fearfully; they hang back, and seem to say "Oh, dear!" Theseelaborate sculptures, full of ingenuous intention and of the reality ofearly faith, are in a remarkable state of preservation; they bear nosuperficial signs of restoration and appear scarcely to have sufferedfrom the centuries. They are delightfully expressive; the artist had theadvantage of knowing exactly the effect be wished to produce. The interior of the cathedral has a great simplicity and majesty and, above all, a tremendous height. The nave is extraordinary in thisrespect; it dwarfs everything else I know. I should add, however, that Iam in architecture always of the opinion of the last speaker. Any greatbuilding seems to me while I look at it the ultimate expression. At anyrate, during the hour that I sat gazing along the high vista of Bourgesthe interior of the great vessel corresponded to my vision of theevening before. There is a tranquil largeness, a kind of infinitude, about such an edifice; it soothes and purifies the spirit, itilluminates the mind. There are two aisles, on either side, in additionto the nave--five in all--and, as I have said, there are no transepts;an omission which lengthens the vista, so that from my place near thedoor the central jewelled window in the depths of the perpendicularchoir seemed a mile or two away. The second or outward of each pair ofaisles is too low and the first too high; without this inequality thenave would appear to take an even more prodigious flight. The doubleaisles pass all the way round the choir, the windows of which areinordinately rich in magnificent old glass. I have seen glass as fine inother churches, but I think I have never seen so much of it at once. Beside the cathedral, on the north, is a curious structure of thefourteenth or fifteenth century, which looks like an enormous flyingbuttress, with its support, sustaining the north tower. It makes amassive arch, high in the air, and produces a romantic effect as peoplepass under it to the open gardens of the Archevêché, which extend to aconsiderable distance in the rear of the church. The structuresupporting the arch has the girth of a largeish house, and containschambers with whose uses I am unacquainted, but to which the deeppulsations of the cathedral, the vibration of its mighty bells and theroll of its organ-tones must be transmitted even through the great armof stone. The archiepiscopal palace, not walled in as at Tours, is visible as astately habitation of the last century, at the time of my visit underrepair after a fire. From this side and from the gardens of the palacethe nave of the cathedral is visible in all its great length and height, with its extraordinary multitude of supports. The gardens aforesaid, accessible through tall iron gates, are the promenade--the Tuileries--ofthe town, and, very pretty in themselves, are immensely set off by theoverhanging church. It was warm and sunny; the benches were empty; I satthere a long time in that pleasant state of mind which visits thetraveller in foreign towns, when he is not too hurried, while hewonders where he had better go next. The straight, unbroken line of theroof of the cathedral was very noble; but I could see from this pointhow much finer the effect would have been if the towers, which haddropped almost out of sight, might have been carried still higher. Thearchiepiscopal gardens look down at one end over a sort of esplanade orsuburban avenue lying on a lower level on which they open, and whereseveral detachments of soldiers (Bourges is full of soldiers) had justbeen drawn up. The civil population was also collecting, and I saw thatsomething was going to happen. I learned that a private of the Chasseurswas to be "broken" for stealing, and every one was eager to behold theceremony. Sundry other detachments arrived on the ground, besides manyof the military who had come as a matter of taste. One of them describedto me the process of degradation from the ranks, and I felt for a momenta hideous curiosity to see it, under the influence of which I lingered alittle. But only a little; the hateful nature of the spectacle hurriedme away at the same that others were hurrying forward. As I turned myback upon it I reflected that human beings are cruel brutes, though Icould not flatter myself that the ferocity of the thing was exclusivelyFrench. In another country the concourse would have been equally great, and the moral of it all seemed to be that military penalties are asterrible as military honours are gratifying. [Illustration] Chapter xii [Bourges: Jacques Coeur] The cathedral is not the only lion of Bourges; the house of JacquesCoeur awaits you in posture scarcely less leonine. This remarkable manhad a very strange history, and he too was "broken" like the wretchedsoldier whom I did not stay to see. He has been rehabilitated, however, by an age which does not fear the imputation of paradox, and a marblestatue of him ornaments the street in front of his house. To interprethim according to this image--a womanish figure in a long robe and aturban, with big bare arms and a dramatic pose--would be to think of himas a kind of truculent sultana. He wore the dress of his period, but hisspirit was very modern; he was a Vanderbilt or a Rothschild of thefifteenth century. He supplied the ungrateful Charles VII. With money topay the troops who, under the heroic Maid, [Illustration: Bourges--THE HOUSE OF JACQUES COEUR] drove the English from French soil. His house, which to-day is used as aPalais de Justice, appears to have been regarded at the time it wasbuilt very much as the residence of Mr. Vanderbilt is regarded in NewYork to-day. It stands on the edge of the hill on which most of the townis planted, so that, behind, it plunges down to a lower level, and, ifyou approach it on that side, as I did, to come round to the front of ityou have to ascend a longish flight of steps. The back, of old, musthave formed a portion of the city wall; at any rate it offers to viewtwo big towers which Joanne says were formerly part of the defence ofBourges. From the lower level of which I speak--the square in front ofthe post-office--the palace of Jacques Coeur looks very big and strongand feudal; from the upper street, in front of it, it looks veryhandsome and delicate. To this street it presents two tiers and aconsiderable length of façade; and it has both within and without agreat deal of curious and beautiful detail. Above the portal, in thestonework, are two false windows, in which two figures, a man and awoman, apparently household servants, are represented, in sculpture, aslooking down into the street. The effect is homely, yet grotesque, andthe figures are sufficiently living to make one commiserate them forhaving been condemned, in so dull a town, to spend several centuries atthe window. They appear to be watching for the return of their master, who left his beautiful house one morning and never came back. The history of Jacques Coeur, which has been written by M. PierreClément in a volume crowned by the French Academy, is very wonderful andinteresting, but I have no space to go into it here. There is no morecurious example, and few more tragical, of a great fortune crumblingfrom one day to the other, or of the antique superstition that the godsgrow jealous of human success. Merchant, millionaire, banker, ship-owner, royal favourite and minister of finance, explorer of theEast and monopolist of the glittering trade between that quarter of theglobe and his own, great capitalist who had anticipated the brilliantoperations of the present time, he expiated his prosperity by poverty, imprisonment, and torture. The obscure points in his career have beenelucidated by M. Clément, who has drawn, moreover, a very vivid pictureof the corrupt and exhausted state of France during the middle of thefifteenth century. He has shown that the spoliation of the greatmerchant was a deliberately calculated act, and that the king sacrificedhim without scruple or shame to the avidity of a singularly villanousset of courtiers. The whole story is an extraordinary picture ofhigh-handed rapacity--the crudest possible assertion of the right of thestronger. The victim was stripped of his property, but escaped with hislife, made his way out of France and, betaking himself to Italy, offeredhis services to the Pope. It is proof of the consideration that heenjoyed in Europe, and of the variety of his accomplishments, thatCalixtus III. Should have appointed him to take command of a fleet whichhis Holiness was fitting out against the Turks. Jacques Coeur, however, was not destined to lead it to victory. He died shortly after theexpedition had started, in the island of Chios, in 1456. The house atBourges, his native place, testifies in some degree to his wealth andsplendour, though it has in parts that want of space which is strikingin many of the buildings of the Middle Ages. The court indeed is on alarge scale, ornamented with turrets and arcades, with several beautifulwindows and with sculptures inserted in the walls, representing thevarious sources of the great fortune of the owner. M. Pierre Clémentdescribes this part of the house as having been of an "incomparablerichesse"--an estimate of its charms which seems slightly exaggeratedto-day. There is, however, something delicate and familiar in thebas-reliefs of which I have spoken, little scenes of agriculture andindustry which show that the proprietor was not ashamed of callingattention to his harvests and enterprises. To-day we should question thetaste of such allusions, even in plastic form, in the house of a"merchant prince" however self-made. Why should it be, accordingly, thatthese quaint little panels at Bourges do not displease us? It is perhapsbecause things very ancient never, for some mysterious reason, appearvulgar. This fifteenth-century millionaire, with his palace, his"swagger" sculptures, may have produced that impression on some criticalspirits of his own day. The portress who showed me into the building was a dear little oldwoman, with the gentlest, sweetest, saddest face--a little white, agedface, with dark, pretty eyes--and the most considerate manner. She tookme up into an upper hall, where there were a couple of curiouschimney-pieces and a fine old oaken roof, the latter representing thehollow of a long boat. There is a certain oddity in a native ofBourges--an inland town if ever there was one, without even a river (tocall a river) to encourage nautical ambitions--having found his end asadmiral of a fleet; but this boat-shaped roof, which is extremelygraceful and is repeated in another apartment, would suggest that theimagination of Jacques Coeur was fond of riding the waves. Indeed, as hetrafficked in Oriental products and owned many galleons, it is probablethat he was personally as much at home in certain Mediterranean portsas in the capital of the pastoral Berry. If, when he looked at theceilings of his mansion, he saw his boats upside down, this was only asuggestion of the shortest way of emptying them of their treasures. Heis presented in person above one of the great stone chimney-pieces, incompany with his wife, Macée de Léodepart--I like to write such anextraordinary name. Carved in white stone, the two sit playing at chessat an open window, through which they appear to give their attentionmuch more to the passers-by than to the game. They are also exhibited inother attitudes; though I do not recognise them in the composition ontop of one of the fireplaces which represents the battlements of acastle, with the defenders (little figures between the crenellations)hurling down missiles with a great deal of fury and expression. It wouldhave been hard to believe that the man who surrounded himself with thesefriendly and humorous devices had been guilty of such wrong-doing as tocall down the heavy hand of justice. It is a curious fact, however, that Bourges contains legal associationsof a purer kind than the prosecution of Jacques Coeur, which, in spiteof the rehabilitations of history, can hardly be said yet to haveterminated, inasmuch as the law-courts of the city are installed in hisquondam residence. At a short distance from it stands the Hôtel Cujas, one of the curiosities of Bourges and the habitation for many years ofthe great jurisconsult who revived in the sixteenth century the study ofthe Roman law and professed it during the close of his life in theuniversity of the capital of Berry. The learned Cujas had, in spite ofhis sedentary pursuits, led a very wandering life; he died at Bourges inthe year 1590. Sedentary pursuits are perhaps not exactly [Illustration: BOURGES--THE HOUSE OF JACQUES COEUR] what I should call them, having read in the "Biographie Universelle"(sole source of my knowledge of the renowned Cujacius) that his usualmanner of study was to spread himself on his belly on the floor. He didnot sit down, he lay down; and the "Biographie Universelle" has (for sograve a work) an amusing picture of the short, fat, untidy scholardragging himself _à plat ventre_, across his room, from one pile ofbooks to the other. The house in which these singular gymnastics tookplace, and which is now the headquarters of the gendarmerie, is one ofthe most picturesque at Bourges. Dilapidated and discoloured, it has acharming Renaissance front. A high wall separates it from the street, and on this wall, which is divided by a large open gateway, are perchedtwo overhanging turrets. The open gateway admits you to the court, beyond which the melancholy mansion erects itself, decorated also withturrets, with fine old windows and with a beautiful tone of faded redbrick and rusty stone. It is a charming encounter for a provincialby-street; one of those accidents in the hope of which the travellerwith a propensity for sketching (whether on a little paper block or onthe tablets of his brain) decides to turn a corner at a venture. Abrawny gendarme in his shirtsleeves was polishing his boots in thecourt; an ancient, knotted vine, forlorn of its clusters, hung itselfover a doorway and dropped its shadow on the rough grain of the wall. The place was very sketchable. I am sorry to say, however, that it wasalmost the only "bit. " Various other curious old houses are supposed toexist at Bourges, and I wandered vaguely about in search of them. But Ihad little success, and I ended by becoming sceptical. Bourges is a_ville de province_ in the full force of the term, especially asapplied invidiously. The streets, narrow, tortuous, and dirty, havevery wide cobble-stones; the houses for the most part are shabby, without local colour. The look of things is neither modern norantique--a kind of mediocrity of middle age. There is an enormous numberof blank walls--walls of gardens, of courts, of private houses--thatavert themselves from the street as if in natural chagrin at there beingso little to see. Round about is a dull, flat, featureless country, onwhich the magnificent cathedral looks down. There is a peculiar dulnessand ugliness in a French town of this type, which, I must immediatelyadd, is not the most frequent one. In Italy everything has a charm, acolour, a grace; even desolation and ennui. In England a cathedral citymay be sleepy, but it is pretty sure to be mellow. In the course of sixweeks spent _en province_, however, I saw few places that had not moreexpression than Bourges. I went back to the cathedral; that, after all, was a feature. Then Ireturned to my hotel, where it was time to dine, and sat down, as usual, with the _commis-voyageurs_, who cut their bread on their thumb andpartook of every course; and after this repast I repaired for a while tothe café, which occupied a part of the basement of the inn and openedinto its court. This café was a friendly, homely, sociable spot, whereit seemed the habit of the master of the establishment to _tutoyer_ hiscustomers and the practice of the customers to _tutoyer_ the waiter. Under these circumstances the waiter of course felt justified in sittingdown at the same table with a gentleman who had come in and asked himfor writing materials. He served this gentleman with a horrible littleportfolio covered with shiny black cloth and accompanied with two sheetsof [Illustration: BOURGES: THE CATHEDRAL (WEST FRONT)] thin paper, three wafers, and one of those instruments of torture whichpass in France for pens--these being the utensils invariably evoked bysuch a request; and then, finding himself at leisure, he placed himselfopposite and began to write a letter of his own. This trifling incidentreminded me afresh that France is a democratic country. I think Ireceived an admonition to the same effect from the free, familiar way inwhich the game of whist was going on just behind me. It was attendedwith a great deal of noisy pleasantry, flavoured every now and then witha dash of irritation. There was a young man of whom I made a note; hewas such a beautiful specimen of his class. Sometimes he was veryfacetious, chattering, joking, punning, showing off; then, as the gamewent on and he lost and had to pay the _consommation_, he dropped hisamiability, slanged his partner, declared he wouldn't play any more, andwent away in a fury. Nothing could be more perfect or more amusing thanthe contrast. The manner of the whole affair was such as, I apprehend, one would not have seen among our English-speaking people; both thejauntiness of the first phase and the petulance of the second. To holdthe balance straight, however, I may remark that if the men were allfearful "cads, " they were, with their cigarettes and theirinconsistency, less heavy, less brutal, than our dear English-speakingcad; just as the bright little café where a robust materfamilias, dolingout sugar and darning a stocking, sat in her place under the mirrorbehind the _comptoir_, was a much more civilised spot than a Britishpublic-house or a "commercial room, " with pipes and whisky, or even thanan American saloon. [Illustration] Chapter xiii [Le Mans] It is very certain that when I left Tours for Le Mans it was a journeyand not an excursion; for I had no intention of coming back. Thequestion indeed was to get away, no easy matter in France in the earlydays of October, when the whole _jeunesse_ of the country is returningto school. It is accompanied, apparently, with parents and grandparents, and it fills the trains with little pale-faced _lycéens_, who gaze outof the windows with a longing, lingering air not unnatural on the partof small members of a race in which life is intense, who are about to berestored to those big educative barracks that do such violence to ourAmerican appreciation of the opportunities of boyhood. The train stoppedevery five minutes; but fortunately the country was charming--hilly andbosky, eminently good-humoured, and dotted here and there with a smartlittle château. The old capital of the province of the Maine, which hasgiven its name to a great American State, is a fairly interesting town, but I confess that I found in it less than I expected to admire. Myexpectations had doubtless been my own fault; there is no particularreason why Le Mans should fascinate. It stands upon a hill, indeed--amuch better hill than the gentle swell of Bourges. This hill, however, is not steep in all directions; from the railway, as I arrived, it wasnot even perceptible. Since I am making comparisons, I may remark that, on the other hand, the Boule d'Or at Le Mans is an appreciably betterinn than the Boule d'Or at Bourges. It looks out upon a smallmarket-place which has a certain amount of character and seems to beslipping down the slope on which it lies, though it has in the middle anugly _halle_, or circular market-house, to keep it in position. At LeMans, as at Bourges, my first business was with the cathedral, to whichI lost no time in directing my steps. It suffered by juxtaposition tothe great church I had seen a few days before; yet it has some noblefeatures. It stands on the edge of the eminence of the town, which fallsstraight away on two sides of it, and makes a striking mass, bristlingbehind, as you see it from below, with rather small but singularlynumerous flying buttresses. On my way to it I happened to walk throughthe one street which contains a few ancient and curious houses, a verycrooked and untidy lane, of really mediæval aspect, honoured with thedenomination of the Grand Rue. Here is the house of Queen Berengaria--anabsurd name, as the building is of a date some three hundred years laterthan the wife of Richard Coeur de Lion, who has a sepulchral monument inthe south aisle of the cathedral. The structure in question--verysketchable, if the sketcher could get far enough away from it--is anelaborate little dusky façade, overhanging the street, ornamented withpanels of stone, which are covered with delicate Renaissance sculpture. A fat old woman standing in the door of a small grocer's shop next toit--a most gracious old woman, with a bristling moustache and a charmingmanner--told me what the house was, and also indicated to me arotten-looking brown wooden mansion in the same street, nearer thecathedral, as the Maison Scarron. The author of the "Roman Comique" andof a thousand facetious verses enjoyed for some years, in the early partof his life, a benefice in the cathedral of Le Mans, which gave him aright to reside in one of the canonical houses. He was rather an oddcanon, but his history is a combination of oddities. He wooed the comicmuse from the arm-chair of a cripple, and in the same position--he wasunable even to go down on his knees--prosecuted that other suit whichmade him the first husband of a lady of whom Louis XIV. Was to be thesecond. There was little of comedy in the future Madame de Maintenon;though, after all, there was doubtless as much as there need have beenin the wife of a poor man who was moved to compose for his tomb such anepitaph as this, which I quote from the "Biographie Universelle": "Celui qui cy maintenant dort, Fit plus de pitié que d'envie, Et souffrit mille fois la mort, Avant que de perdre la vie. Passant, ne fais icy de bruit, Et garde bien qu'il ne s'éveille. Car voicy la première nuit, Que le pauvre Scarron sommeille. " There is rather a quiet, satisfactory _place_ in front of the cathedral, with some good "bits" in it; notably a turret at the angle of one of thetowers and a very fine steep-roofed dwelling, behind low walls, whichit overlooks, with a tall iron gate. This house has two or three littlepointed towers, a big black, precipitous roof, and a general air ofhaving had a history. There are houses which are scenes, and there arehouses which are only houses. The trouble with the domestic architectureof the United States is that it is not scenic, thank goodness, and thecharacteristic of an old structure like the turreted mansion on thehillside of Le Mans is that it is not simply a house. It is a person, asit were, as well. It would be well, indeed, if it might havecommunicated a little of its personality to the front of the cathedral, which has none of its own. Shabby, rusty, unfinished, this front has aromanesque portal, but nothing in the way of a tower. One sees fromwithout, at a glance, the peculiarity of the church--the disparitybetween the romanesque nave, which is small and of the twelfth century, and the immense and splendid transepts and choir, of a period a hundredyears later. Outside, this end of the church rises far above the nave, which looks merely like a long porch leading to it, with a small andcurious romanesque porch in its own south flank. The transepts, shallowbut very lofty, display to the spectators in the _place_ the reach oftheir two clere-storey windows, which occupy, above, the whole expanseof the wall. The south transept terminates in a sort of tower, which isthe only one of which the cathedral can boast. Within, the effect of thechoir is superb; it is a church in itself, with the nave simply for apoint of view. As I stood there I read in my Murray that it has thestamp of the date of the perfection of pointed Gothic, and I foundnothing to object to the remark. It suffers little by confrontation withBourges and, taken in itself, seems to me quite as fine. A passage ofdouble aisles surrounds it, with the arches that divide them supportedon very thick round columns, not clustered. There are twelve chapels inthis passage, and a charming little lady-chapel filled with gorgeous oldglass. The sustained height of this almost detached choir is very noble;its lightness and grace, its soaring symmetry, carry the eye up toplaces in the air from which it is slow to descend. Like Tours, likeChartres, like Bourges (apparently like all the French cathedrals, andunlike several English ones), Le Mans is rich in splendid glass. Thebeautiful upper windows of the choir make, far aloft, a brave gallery ofpictures, blooming with vivid colour. It is the south transept thatcontains the formless image--a clumsy stone woman lying on herback--which purports to represent Queen Berengaria aforesaid. The view of the cathedral from the rear is, as usual, very fine. A smallgarden behind it masks its base; but you descend the hill to a large_place de foire_, adjacent to a fine old public promenade which is knownas Les Jacobins, a sort of miniature Tuileries, where I strolled for awhile in rectangular alleys destitute of herbage and received a deeperimpression of vanished things. The cathedral, on the pedestal of itshill, looks considerably farther than the fair-ground and the Jacobins, between the rather bare poles of whose straightly planted trees you mayadmire it at a convenient distance. I admired it till I thought I shouldremember it (better than the event has proved), and then I wandered awayand looked at another curious old church, Notre-Dame-de-la-Couture. Thissacred edifice made a picture for ten minutes, but the picture has fadednow. I reconstruct a yellowish-brown façade and a portal fretted withearly sculptures; but the [Illustration: LE MANS--THE CATHEDRAL] details have gone the way of all incomplete sensations. After you havestood awhile, in the choir of the cathedral there is no sensation at LeMans that goes very far. For some reason not now to be traced I hadlooked for more than this. I think the reason was to some extent simplyin the name of the place; for names, on the whole, whether they be goodreasons or not, are very active ones. Le Mans, if I am not mistaken, hasa sturdy, feudal sound; suggests something dark and square, a vision ofold ramparts and gates. Perhaps I had been unduly impressed by the fact, accidentally revealed to me, that Henry II. , first of the EnglishPlantagenets, was born there. Of course it is easy to assure one's selfin advance, but does it not often happen that one had rather not beassured? There is a pleasure sometimes in running the risk ofdisappointment. I took mine, such as it was, quietly enough, while I satbefore dinner at the door of one of the cafés in the market-place with a_bitter-et-curaçao_ (invaluable pretext at such an hour!) to keep mecompany. I remember that in this situation there came over me animpression which both included and excluded all possibledisappointments. The afternoon was warm and still; the air was admirablysoft. The good Manceaux, in little groups and pairs, were seated nearme; my ear was soothed by the fine shades of French enunciation, by thedetached syllables of that perfect tongue. There was nothing inparticular in the prospect to charm; it was an average French view. YetI felt a charm, a kind of sympathy, a sense of the completeness ofFrench life and of the lightness and brightness of the social air, together with a desire to arrive at friendly judgments, to express apositive interest. I know not why this transcendental mood should havedescended upon me then and there; but that idle half-hour in front ofthe café, in the mild October afternoon suffused with human sounds, isperhaps the most abiding thing I brought away from Le Mans. [Illustration] Chapter xiv [Angers] I am shocked at finding, just after this noble declaration ofprinciples, that in a little note-book which at that time I carriedabout with me the celebrated city of Angers is denominated a "sell. " Ireproduce this vulgar word with the greatest hesitation, and onlybecause it brings me more quickly to my point. This point is that Angersbelongs to the disagreeable class of old towns that have been, as theEnglish say, "done up. " Not the oldness, but the newness, of the placeis what strikes the sentimental tourist to-day, as he wanders withirritation along second-rate boulevards, looking vaguely about him forabsent gables. "Black Angers, " in short, is a victim of modernimprovements and quite unworthy of its admirable name--a name which, like that of Le Mans, had always had, to my eyes, a highly picturesquevalue. It looks particularly well on the Shakespearean page (in "KingJohn"), where we imagine it uttered (though such would not have been theutterance of the period) with a fine grinding insular accent. Angersfigures with importance in early English history: it was the capitalcity of the Plantagenet race, home of that Geoffrey of Anjou whomarried, as second husband, the Empress Maud, daughter of Henry I. Andcompetitor of Stephen, and became father of Henry II. , first of thePlantagenet kings, born, as we have seen, at Le Mans. These facts createa natural presumption that Angers will look historic; I turned them overin my mind as I travelled in the train from Le Mans, through a countrythat was really pretty and looked more like the usual English than likethe usual French scenery, with its fields cut up by hedges and aconsiderable rotundity in its trees. On my way from the station to thehotel, however, it became plain that I should lack a good pretext forpassing that night at the Cheval Blanc; I foresaw that I should havecontented myself before the end of the day. I remained at the WhiteHorse only long enough to discover that it was an exceptionally goodprovincial inn, one of the best that I encountered during six weeksspent in these establishments. "Stupidly and vulgarly modernised"--that is another flower from mynote-book, and note-books are not obliged to be reasonable. "There aresome narrow and tortuous streets, with a few curious old houses, " Icontinue to quote; "there is a castle, of which the exterior is mostextraordinary, and there is a cathedral of moderate interest. " It isfair to say that the Château d'Angers is by itself worth a pilgrimage;the only drawback is that you have seen it in a quarter of an hour. Youcannot do more than look at it, and one good look does your business. Ithas no beauty, no grace, no detail, nothing that charms or detains you;it is simply very old and very big--so big and so old that this simpleimpression is enough, and it takes its place in your recollections as aperfect specimen of a superannuated stronghold. It stands at one end ofthe town, surrounded by a huge, deep moat, which originally containedthe waters of the Maine, now divided from it by a quay. The water-frontof Angers is poor--wanting in colour and in movement; and there isalways an effect of perversity in a town lying near a great river andyet not upon it. The Loire is a few miles off; but Angers contentsitself with a meagre affluent of that stream. The effect was naturallymuch better when the vast dark bulk of the castle, with its seventeenprodigious towers, rose out of the protecting flood. These towers are oftremendous girth and solidity; they are encircled with great bands, orhoops, of white stone, and are much enlarged at the base. Between themhang high curtains of infinitely old-looking masonry, apparently a denseconglomeration of slate, the material of which the town was originallybuilt (thanks to rich quarries in the neighbourhood), and to which itowed its appellation of the Black. There are no windows, no apertures, and to-day no battlements nor roofs. These accessories were removed byHenry III. , so that, in spite of its grimness and blackness, the placehas not even the interest of looking like a prison; it being, as Isuppose, the essence of a prison not to be open to the sky. The onlyfeatures of the enormous structure are the blank, sombre stretches andprotrusions of wall, the effect of which, on so large a scale, isstrange and striking. Begun by Philip Augustus and terminated by St. Louis, the Château d'Angers has of course a great deal of history. Theluckless Fouquet, the extravagant minister of finance of Louis XIV. , whose fall from the heights of grandeur was so sudden and complete, wasconfined here in 1661, just after his arrest, which had taken place atNantes. Here also Huguenots and Vendeans suffered effective captivity. I walked round the parapet which protects the outer edge of the moat (itis all up-hill, and the moat deepens and deepens), till I came to theentrance which faces the town, and which is as bare and strong as therest. The concierge took me into the court; but there was nothing tosee. The place is used as a magazine of ammunition, and the yardcontains a multitude of ugly buildings. The only thing to do is to walkround the bastions for the view; but at the moment of my visit theweather was thick, and the bastions began and ended with themselves. SoI came out and took another look at the big, black exterior, buttressedwith white-ribbed towers, and perceived that a desperate sketcher mightextract a picture from it, especially if he were to bring in, as theysay, the little black bronze statue of the good King René (a weakproduction of [Illustration: ANGERS--OLD TIMBERED HOUSES] David d'Angers), which, standing within sight, ornaments the melancholyfaubourg. He would do much better, however, with the very striking oldtimbered house (I suppose of the fifteenth century) which is called theMaison d'Adam and is easily the first specimen at Angers of the domesticarchitecture of the past. This admirable house, in the centre of thetown, gabled, elaborately timbered, and much restored, is a reallyimposing monument. The basement is occupied by a linen-draper, whoflourishes under the auspicious sign of the Mère de Famille; and abovehis shop the tall front rises in five overhanging storeys. As the houseoccupies the angle of a little _place_, this front is double, and theblack beams and wooden supports, displayed over a large surface andcarved and interlaced, have a high picturesqueness. The Maison d'Adam isquite in the grand style, and I am sorry to say I failed to learn whathistory attaches to its name. If I spoke just above of the cathedral as"moderate, " I suppose I should beg its pardon; for this serious chargewas probably prompted by the fact that it consists only of a nave, without side aisles. A little reflection now convinces me that such aform is a distinction; and indeed I find it mentioned, ratherinconsistently, in my note-book, a little further on, as "extremelysimple and grand. " The nave is spoken of in the same volume as "big, serious, and Gothic, " though the choir and transepts are noted as veryshallow. But it is not denied that the air of the whole thing isoriginal and striking; and it would therefore appear, after all, thatthe cathedral of Angers, built during the twelfth and thirteenthcenturies, is a sufficiently honourable church; the more that its highwest front, adorned with a very primitive Gothic portal, supports twoelegant tapering spires, between which, unfortunately, an ugly modernpavilion has been inserted. I remember nothing else at Angers but the curious old Café Serin, where, after I had had my dinner at the inn, I went and waited for the trainwhich, at nine o'clock in the evening, was to convey me, in a couple ofhours, to Nantes--an establishment remarkable for its great size and itsair of tarnished splendour, its brown gilding and smoky frescoes, asalso for the fact that it was hidden away on the second floor of anunassuming house in an unilluminated street. It hardly seemed a placewhere you would drop in; but when once you had found it, it presenteditself, with the cathedral, the castle, and the Maison d'Adam, as one ofthe historical monuments of Angers. [Illustration] Chapter xv [Nantes] If I spent two nights at Nantes, it was for reasons of conveniencerather than of sentiment; though indeed I spent them in a big circularroom which had a stately, lofty, last-century look--a look that consoledme a little for the whole place being dirty. The high, old-fashioned inn(it had a huge windy _porte-cochère_, and you climbed a vast black stonestaircase to get to your room) looked out on a dull square, surroundedwith other tall houses and occupied on one side by the theatre, apompous building decorated with columns and statues of the muses. Nantesbelongs to the class of towns which are always spoken of as "fine, " andits position near the mouth of the Loire gives it, I believe, muchcommercial movement. It is a spacious, rather regular city, looking, inthe parts that I traversed, neither very fresh nor very venerable. Itderives its principal character from the handsome quays on the Loire, which are overhung with tall eighteenth-century houses (very numeroustoo in the other streets)--houses with big _entresols_ marked by archedwindows, classic pediments, balcony-rails of fine old iron-work. Thesefeatures exist in still better form at Bordeaux; but, putting Bordeauxaside, Nantes is quite architectural. The view up and down the quays hasthe cool, neutral tone of colour that one finds so often in Frenchwater-side places--the bright greyness which is the tone of Frenchlandscape art. The whole city has rather a grand, or at least aneminently well-established, air. During a day passed in it of course Ihad time to go to the Musée; the more so that I have a weakness forprovincial museums--a sentiment that depends but little on the qualityof the collection. The pictures may be bad, but the place is oftencurious; and indeed from bad pictures, in certain moods of the mind, there is a degree of entertainment to be derived. If they are tolerablyold they are often touching; but they must have a relative antiquity, for I confess I can do nothing with works of art of which the badness isof recent origin. The cool, still, empty chambers in which indifferentcollections are apt to be preserved, the red brick tiles, the diffusedlight, the musty odour, the mementos around you of dead fashions, thesnuffy custodian in a black skull-cap, who pulls aside a faded curtainto show you the lustreless gem of the museum--these things have a mildhistorical quality, and the sallow canvases after all illustratesomething. Many of those in the museum of Nantes illustrate the taste ofa successful warrior, having been bequeathed to the city by Napoleon'smarshal Clarke (created Duc de Feltre). In addition to these there isthe usual number of specimens of the contemporary French school, culledfrom the annual Salons and presented to the museum by the State. Wherever the traveller goes, in France, he is reminded of this veryhonourable practice--the purchase by the Government of a certain numberof "pictures of the year, " which are presently distributed in theprovinces. Governments succeed each other and bid for success bydifferent devices; but the "patronage of art" is a plank, as we shouldsay here, in every platform. The works of art are oftenill-selected--there is an official taste which you immediatelyrecognise--but the custom is essentially liberal, and a Government whichshould neglect it would be felt to be painfully common. The only thingin this particular Musée that I remember is a fine portrait of a womanby Ingres--very flat and Chinese, but with an interest of line and agreat deal of style. There is a castle at Nantes which resembles in some degree that ofAngers, but has, without, much less of the impressiveness of great size, and, within, much more interest of detail. The court contains theremains of a very fine piece of late Gothic--a tall elegant building ofthe sixteenth century. The château is naturally not wanting in history. It was the residence of the old Dukes of Brittany, and was brought, withthe rest of the province, by the Duchess Anne, the last representativeof that race, as her dowry, to Charles VIII. I read in the excellenthandbook of M. Joanne that it has been visited by almost every one ofthe kings of France, from Louis XI. Downward; and also that it hasserved as a place of sojourn less voluntary on the part of various otherdistinguished persons, from the horrible Maréchal de Retz, who in thefifteenth century was executed at Nantes for the murder of a couple ofhundred young children, sacrificed in abominable rites, to the ardentDuchess of Berry, mother of the Count of Chambord, who was confinedthere for a few hours in 1832, just after her arrest in a neighbouringhouse. I looked at the house in question--you may see it from theplatform in front of the château--and tried to figure to myself thatembarrassing scene. The Duchess, after having unsuccessfully raised thestandard of revolt (for the exiled Bourbons) in the legitimist Bretagne, and being "wanted, " as the phrase is, by the police of Louis Philippe, had hidden herself in a small but loyal house at Nantes, where, at theend of five months of seclusion, she was betrayed, for gold, to theaustere M. Guizot by one of her servants, an Alsatian Jew named Deutz. For many hours before her capture she had been compressed into aninterstice behind a fireplace, and by the time she was drawn forth intothe light she had been ominously scorched. The man who showed me thecastle indicated also another historic spot, a house with little_tourelles_ on the Quai de la Fosse, in which Henry IV. Is said to havesigned the Edict revoked by Louis XIV. I am, however, not in a positionto answer for this pedigree. There is another point in the history of the fine old houses whichcommand the Loire, of which, I suppose, one may be tolerably sure; thatis their having, placid as they stand there to-day, looked down on thehorrors of the Terror of 1793, the bloody reign of the monster Carrierand his infamous _noyades_. The most hideous episode of the Revolutionwas enacted at Nantes, where hundreds of men and women, tied together incouples, were set afloat upon rafts and sunk to the bottom of the Loire. The tall eighteenth-century house, full of the _air noble_, in Francealways reminds me of those dreadful years--of the street-scenes of theRevolution. Superficially, the association is incongruous, for nothingcould be more formal and decorous than the patent expression of theseeligible residences. But whenever I have a vision of prisoners bound ontumbrels that jolt slowly to the scaffold, of heads carried on pikes, ofgroups of heated _citoyennes_ shaking their fists at closedcoach-windows, I see in the background the well-ordered features of thearchitecture of the period--the clear grey stone, the high pilasters, the arching lines of the _entresol_, the classic pediment, theslate-covered attic. There is not much architecture at Nantes except thedomestic. The cathedral, with a rough west front and stunted towers, makes no impression as you approach it. It is true that it does its bestto recover its reputation as soon as you have passed the threshold. Begun in 1434 and finished about the end of the fifteenth century, as Idiscover in Murray, it has a magnificent nave, not of great length, butof extraordinary height and lightness. On the other hand, it has nochoir whatever. There is much entertainment in France in seeing what acathedral will take upon itself to possess or to lack; for it is onlythe smaller number that have the full complement of features. Some havea very fine nave and no choir; others a very fine choir and no nave. Some have a rich outside and nothing within; others a very blank faceand a very glowing heart. There are a hundred possibilities of povertyand wealth, and they make the most unexpected combinations. The great treasure of Nantes is the two noble sepulchral monuments whichoccupy either transept, and one of which has (in its nobleness) therare distinction of being a production of our own time. On the southside stands the tomb of Francis II. , the last of the Dukes of Brittany, and of his second wife, Margaret of Foix, erected in 1507 by theirdaughter Anne, whom we have encountered already at the Château deNantes, where she was born; at Langeais, where she married her firsthusband; at Amboise, where she lost him; at Blois, where she married hersecond, the "good" Louis XII. , who divorced an impeccable spouse to makeroom for her, and where she herself died. Transferred to the cathedralfrom a demolished convent, this monument, the masterpiece of MichelColomb, author of the charming tomb of the children of Charles VIII. Andthe aforesaid Anne, which we admired at Saint Gatien of Tours, is one ofthe most brilliant works of the French Renaissance. It has a splendideffect and is in perfect preservation. A great table of black marblesupports the reclining figures of the duke and duchess, who lie therepeacefully and majestically, in their robes and crowns, with their headseach on a cushion, the pair of which are supported from behind by threecharming little kneeling angels; at the foot of the quiet couple are alion and a greyhound, with heraldic devices. At each of the angles ofthe table is a large figure in white marble of a woman elaboratelydressed, with a symbolic meaning, and these figures, with theircontemporary faces and clothes, which give them the air of realisticportraits, are truthful and living, if not remarkably beautiful. Roundthe sides of the tomb are small images of the apostles. There is a kindof masculine completeness in the work, and a certain robustness oftaste. In nothing were the sculptors of the Renaissance more fortunate than inbeing in advance of us with their tombs: they have left us nothing tosay in regard to the great final contrast--the contrast between theimmobility of death and the trappings and honours that survive. Theyexpressed in every way in which it was possible to express it thesolemnity of their conviction that the marble image was a part of thepersonal greatness of the defunct, and the protection, the redemption, of his memory. A modern tomb, in comparison, is a sceptical affair; itinsists too little on the honours. I say this in the face of the factthat one has only to step across the cathedral of Nantes to stand in thepresence of one of the purest and most touching of modern tombs. Catholic Brittany has erected in the opposite transept a monument to oneof the most devoted of her sons, General de Lamoricière, the defender ofthe Pope, the vanquished of Castelfidardo. This noble work, from thehand of Paul Dubois, one of the most interesting of that new generationof sculptors who have revived in France an art of which our over-dressedcentury had begun to despair, has every merit but the absence of acertain prime feeling. It is the echo of an earlier tune--an echo with abeautiful cadence. Under a Renaissance canopy of white marbleelaborately worked with arabesques and cherubs, in a relief so low thatit gives the work a certain look of being softened and worn by time, lies the body of the Breton soldier with a crucifix clasped to hisbreast and a shroud thrown over his body. At each of the angles sits afigure in bronze, the two best of which, representing Charity andMilitary Courage, had given me extraordinary pleasure when they wereexhibited (in the clay) in the Salon of 1876. They are admirably castand not less admirably conceived: the one a serene, robust young mother, beautiful in line and attitude; the other a lean and vigilant young man, in a helmet that overshadows his serious eyes, resting an outstretchedarm, an admirable military member, upon the hilt of a sword. Thesefigures contain abundant assurance that M. Paul Dubois has beenattentive to Michael Angelo, whom we have all heard called a splendidexample and a bad model. The visor-shadowed face of his warrior is moreor less a reminiscence of the figure on the tomb of Lorenzo de'Medici atFlorence; but it is doubtless none the worse for that. The interest ofthe work of Paul Dubois is its peculiar seriousness, a kind of moralgood faith which is not the commonest feature of French art, and which, united as it is in this case with exceeding knowledge and a remarkablesense of form, produces an impression of deep refinement. The wholemonument is a proof of exquisitely careful study; but I am not sure thatthis impression on the part of the spectator is the happiest possible. It explains much of the great beauty, and it also explains perhaps alittle of the slight pedantry. That word, however, is scarcely in place;I only mean that M. Dubois has made a visible effort, which has visiblytriumphed. Simplicity is not always strength, and our complicated moderngenius contains treasures of intention. This fathomless modern elementis an immense charm on the part of M. Paul Dubois. I am lost inadmiration of the deep æsthetic experience, the enlightenment of taste, revealed by such work. After that I only hope that, Giuseppe Garibaldimay have somewhere or other some commemoration as distinguished. [Illustration] Chapter xvi [La Rochelle] To go from Nantes to La Rochelle you travel straight southward acrossthe historic _bocage_ of La Vendée, the home of royalist bush-fighting. The country, which is exceedingly pretty, bristles with copses, orchards, hedges, and with trees more spreading and sturdy than thetraveller is apt to find the feathery foliage of France. It is true thatas I proceeded it flattened out a good deal, so that for an hour therewas a vast featureless plain, which offered me little entertainmentbeyond the general impression that I was approaching the Bay of Biscay(from which, in reality, I was yet far distant). As we drew near LaRochelle, however, the prospect brightened considerably, and the railwaykept its course beside a charming little canal, or canalised river, bordered with trees and with small, neat, bright-coloured and yetold-fashioned cottages and villas, which stood back, on the fartherside, behind small gardens, hedges, painted palings, patches of turf. The whole effect was Dutch and delightful; and in being delightful, though not in being Dutch, it prepared me for the charms of La Rochelle, which from the moment I entered it I perceived to be a fascinatinglittle town, a quite original mixture of brightness and dulness. Part ofits brightness comes from its being extraordinarily clean--in which, after all, it _is_ Dutch; a virtue not particularly noticeable atBourges, Le Mans, and Angers. Whenever I go southward, if it be onlytwenty miles, I begin to look out for the south, prepared as I am tofind the careless grace of those latitudes even in things of which itmay be said that they may be south of something, but are not southern. To go from Boston to New York (in this state of mind) is almost as softa sensation as descending the Italian side of the Alps; and to go fromNew York to Philadelphia is to enter a zone of tropical luxuriance andwarmth. Given this absurd disposition, I could not fail to flattermyself, on reaching La Rochelle, that I was already in the Midi, and toperceive in everything, in the language of the country, the _caractèreméridional_. Really a great many things had a hint of it. For thatmatter it seems to me that to arrive in the south at a bound--to wake upthere, as it were--would be a very imperfect pleasure. The full pleasureis to approach by stages and gradations; to observe the successiveshades of difference by which it ceases to be the north. These shadesare exceedingly fine, but your true south-lover has an eye for them all. If he perceives them at New York and Philadelphia--we imagine him boldlyas liberated from Boston--how could he fail to perceive them at LaRochelle? The streets of this dear little city are lined witharcades--good, big, straddling arcades of stone, such as befit a landof hot summers and which recalled to me, not to go further, the duskyporticos of Bayonne. It contains, moreover, a great wide _place d'armes_which looked for all the world like the piazza of some dead Italiantown, empty, sunny, grass-grown, with a row of yellow houses overhangingit, an unfrequented café with a striped awning, a tall, cold, florid, uninteresting cathedral of the eighteenth century on one side, and onthe other a shady walk which forms part of an old rampart. I followedthis walk for some time, under the stunted trees, beside thegrass-covered bastions; it is very charming, winding and wandering, always with trees. Beneath the rampart is a tidal river, and on theother side, for a long distance, the mossy walls of the immense gardenof a seminary. Three hundred years ago La Rochelle was the great Frenchstronghold of Protestantism, but to-day it appears to be a nursery ofPapists. The walk upon the rampart led me round to one of the gates of the town, where I found some small modern fortifications and sundry red-leggedsoldiers, and, beyond the fortifications, another shady walk--a _mail_, as the French say, as well as a _champ de manoeuvre_--on which latterexpanse the poor little red-legs were doing their exercise. It was allvery quiet and very picturesque, rather in miniature; and at once verytidy and a little out of repair. This, however, was but a meagreback-view of La Rochelle, or poor side-view at best. There are othergates than the small fortified aperture just mentioned; one of them, anold grey arch beneath a fine clock-tower, I had passed through on my wayfrom the station. This substantial Tour de l'Horloge separates the townproper from the port; for beyond the old grey arch the place presentsits bright, expressive little face to the sea. I had a charming walkabout the harbour and along the stone piers and sea-walls that shut itin. This indeed, to take things in their order, was after I had had mybreakfast (which I took on arriving) and after I had been to the _hôtelde ville_. The inn had a long narrow garden behind it, with some verytall trees; and passing through this garden to a dim and secluded _salleà manger_, buried in the heavy shade, I had, while I sat at my repast, afeeling of seclusion which amounted almost to a sense of incarceration. I lost this sense, however, after I had paid my bill, and went out tolook for traces of the famous siege, which is the principal title of LaRochelle to renown. I had come thither partly because I thought it wouldbe interesting to stand for a few moments in so gallant a spot, andpartly because, I confess, I had a curiosity to see what had been thestarting-point of the Huguenot emigrants who founded the town of NewRochelle in the State of New York, a place in which I had passed sundrymemorable hours. It was strange to think, as I strolled through thepeaceful little port, that these quiet waters, during the wars ofreligion, had swelled with a formidable naval power. The Rochelais hadfleets and admirals, and their stout little Protestant bottoms carrieddefiance up and down. To say that I found any traces of the siege would be to misrepresent thetaste for vivid whitewash by which La Rochelle is distinguished to-day. The only trace is the dent in the marble top of the table on which, inthe _hôtel de ville_, Jean Guiton, the mayor of the city, brought downhis dagger with an oath when in 1628 the vessels and regiments ofRichelieu closed about it on sea and land. This terrible functionary wasthe soul of the resistance; he held out from February [Illustration: LA ROCHELLE] to October in the midst of pestilence and famine. The whole episode hasa brilliant place among the sieges of history; it has been related ahundred times, and I may only glance at it and pass. I limit my ambitionin these light pages to speaking of those things of which I havepersonally received an impression, and I have no such impression of thedefence of La Rochelle. The _hôtel de ville_ is a pretty littlebuilding, in the style of the Renaissance of Francis I. ; but it has leftmuch of its interest in the hands of the restorers. It has been "doneup" without mercy; its natural place would be at Rochelle the New. Asort of battlemented curtain, flanked with turrets, divides it from thestreet and contains a low door (a low door in a high wall is alwaysfelicitous), which admits you to an inner court, where you discover theface of the building. It has statues set into it and is raised upon avery low and very deep arcade. The principal function of the deferentialold portress who conducts you over the place is to call your attentionto the indented table of Jean Guiton; but she shows you other objects ofinterest besides. The interior is absolutely new and extremelysumptuous, abounding in tapestries, upholstery, morocco, velvet, satin. This is especially the case with a really beautiful _grande salle_, where, surrounded with the most expensive upholstery, the mayor holdshis official receptions. (So at least said my worthy portress. ) Themayors of La Rochelle appear to have changed a good deal since the daysof the grim Guiton; but these evidences of municipal splendour areinteresting for the light they throw on French manners. Imagine themayor of an English or an American town of twenty thousand inhabitantsholding magisterial soirées in the town hall! The said _grande salle_, which is unchanged in form and in its larger features, is, I believe, the room in which the Rochelais debated as to whether they should shutthemselves up, and decided in the affirmative. The table and chair ofJean Guiton have been restored, like everything else, and are veryelegant and coquettish pieces of furniture--incongruous relics of aseason of starvation and blood. I believe that Protestantism is somewhatshrunken to-day at La Rochelle, and has taken refuge mainly in the_haute société_ and in a single place of worship. There was nothingparticular to remind me of its supposed austerity as, after leaving the_hôtel de ville_, I walked along the empty porticos and out of the Tourde l'Horloge, which I have already mentioned. If I stopped and looked upat this venerable monument, it was not to ascertain the hour, for Iforesaw that I should have more time at La Rochelle than I knew what todo with; but because its high, grey, weather-beaten face was an obvioussubject for a sketch. The little port, which has two basins and is accessible only to vesselsof light tonnage, had a certain gaiety and as much local colour as youplease. Fisher-folk of picturesque type were strolling about, most ofthem Bretons; several of the men with handsome, simple faces, not at allbrutal, and with a splendid brownness--the golden-brown colour on cheekand beard that you see on an old Venetian sail. It was a squally, showery day, with sudden drizzles of sunshine; rows of rich-tonedfishing-smacks were drawn up along the quays. The harbour is effectiveto the eye by reason of three battered old towers which at differentpoints overhang it and look infinitely weather-washed and sea-silvered. The most striking of these, the Tour de la Lanterne, is a big grey mass [Illustration] of the fifteenth century, flanked with turrets and crowned with a Gothicsteeple. I found it was called by the people of the place the Tour desQuatre Sergents, though I know not what connection it has with thetouching history of the four young sergeants of the garrison of LaRochelle who were arrested in 1821 as conspirators against theGovernment of the Bourbons, and executed, amid general indignation, inParis in the following year. The quaint little walk, with its label ofRue sur les Murs, to which one ascends from beside the Grosse Horloge, leads to this curious Tour de la Lanterne and passes under it. This walkhas the top of the old town-wall, towards the sea, for a parapet on oneside, and is bordered on the other with decent but irregular littletenements of fishermen, where brown old women, whose caps are as whiteas if they were painted, seem chiefly in possession. In this directionthere is a very pretty stretch of shore, out of the town, through thefortifications (which are Vauban's, by the way); through, also, adiminutive public garden or straggling shrubbery which edges the waterand carries its stunted verdure as far as a big Établissement des Bains. It was too late in the year to bathe, and the Établissement had thebankrupt aspect which belongs to such places out of the season; so Iturned my back upon it and gained, by a circuit in the course of whichthere were sundry water-side items to observe, the other side of thecheery little port, where there is a long breakwater and a still longersea-wall, on which I walked a while, to inhale the strong, salt breathof the Bay of Biscay. La Rochelle serves, in the months of July andAugust, as a _station de bains_ for a modest provincial society; and, putting aside the question of inns, it must be charming on summerafternoons. [Illustration] Chapter xvii [Poitiers] It is an injustice to Poitiers to approach her by night, as I did somethree hours after leaving La Rochelle; for what Poitiers has of best, asthey would say at Poitiers, is the appearance she presents to thearriving stranger who puts his head out of the window of the train. Igazed into the gloom from such an aperture before we got into thestation, for I remembered the impression received on another occasion;but I saw nothing save the universal night, spotted here and there withan ugly railway lamp. It was only as I departed, the following day, thatI assured myself that Poitiers still makes something of the figure sheought on the summit of her considerable hill. I have a kindness for anylittle group of towers, any cluster of roofs and chimneys, that liftthemselves from an eminence over which a long road ascends in zigzags;such a picture creates for the moment a presumption that you are inItaly, and even leads you to believe that if you mount the winding roadyou will come to an old town-wall, an expanse of creviced brownness, andpass under a gateway surmounted by the arms of a mediæval despot. Why Ishould find it a pleasure in France to imagine myself in Italy, is morethan I can say; the illusion has never lasted long enough to beanalysed. From the bottom of its perch Poitiers looks large and high;and indeed, the evening I reached it, the interminable climb of theomnibus of the hotel I had selected, which I found at the station, gaveme the measure of its commanding position. This hotel, "magnifiqueconstruction ornée de statues, " as the Guide-Joanne, usually soreticent, takes the trouble to announce, has an omnibus, and, I suppose, has statues, though I didn't perceive them; but it has very little elsesave immemorial accumulations of dirt. It is magnificent, if you will, but it is not even relatively proper; and a dirty inn has always seemedto me the dirtiest of human things--it has so many opportunities tobetray itself. Poitiers covers a large space, and is as crooked and straggling as youplease; but these advantages are not accompanied with any very salientfeatures or any great wealth of architecture. Although there are fewpicturesque houses, however, there are two or three curious oldchurches. Notre Dame la Grande, in the market-place, a small romanesquestructure of the twelfth century, has a most interesting and venerableexterior. Composed, like all the churches of Poitiers, of a light brownstone with a yellowish tinge, it is covered with primitive but ingenioussculptures, and is really an impressive monument. Within, it has latelybeen daubed over with the most hideous decorative painting that wasever inflicted upon passive pillars and indifferent vaults. Thisbattered yet coherent little edifice has the touching look that residesin everything supremely old; it has arrived at the age at which suchthings cease to feel the years; the waves of time have worn its edges toa kind of patient dulness; there is something mild and smooth, like thestillness, the deafness, of an octogenarian, even in its rudeness ofornament, and it has become insensible to differences of a century ortwo. The cathedral interested me much less than Our Lady the Great, andI have not the spirit to go into statistics about it. It is notstatistical to say that the cathedral stands half-way down the hill ofPoitiers, in a quiet and grass-grown _place_, with an approach ofcrooked lanes and blank garden-walls, and that its most strikingdimension is the width of its façade. This width is extraordinary, butit fails, somehow, to give nobleness to the edifice, which looks within(Murray makes the remark) like a large public hall. There are a nave andtwo aisles, the latter about as high as the nave; and there are somevery fearful modern pictures, which you may see much better than youusually see those specimens of the old masters that lurk in glowingside-chapels, there being no fine old glass to diffuse a kindly gloom. The sacristan of the cathedral showed me something much better than allthis bright bareness; he led me a short distance out of it to the smallTemple de Saint-Jean, which is the most curious object at Poitiers. Itis an early Christian chapel, one of the earliest in France; originally, it would seem--that is, in the sixth or seventh century--a baptistery, but converted into a church while the Christian era was stillcomparatively young. The Temple de Saint-Jean is therefore a monumenteven more venerable than Notre Dame la Grande, and that numbness of agewhich I imputed to Notre Dame ought to reside in still larger measure inits crude and colourless little walls. I call them crude, in spite oftheir having been baked through by the centuries, only because, althoughcertain rude arches and carvings are let into them and they aresurmounted at either end with a small gable, they have (so far as I canremember) little fascination of surface. Notre Dame is still expressive, still pretends to be alive; but the temple has delivered its message andis completely at rest. It retains a kind of atrium, on the level of thestreet, from which you descend to the original floor, now uncovered, butburied for years under a false bottom. A semicircular apse was, apparently at the time of its conversion into a church, thrown out fromthe east wall. In the middle is the cavity of the old baptismal font. The walls and vaults are covered with traces of extremely archaicfrescoes, attributed, I believe, to the twelfth century. These vague, gaunt, staring fragments of figures are, to a certain extent, a reminderof some of the early Christian churches in Rome; they even faintlyrecalled to me the great mosaics of Ravenna. The Temple de Saint-Jeanhas neither the antiquity nor the completeness of those extraordinarymonuments, nearly the most impressive in Europe; but, as one may say, itis very well for Poitiers. Not far from it, in a lonely corner which was animated for the moment bythe vociferations of several old women who were selling tapers, presumably for the occasion of a particular devotion, is the gracefulromanesque church erected in the twelfth century to Saint Radegonde--alady who found means to be a saint even in the capacity of aMerovingian queen. It bears a general resemblance to Notre Dame laGrande, and, as I remember it, is corrugated in somewhat the same mannerwith porous-looking carvings; but I confess that what I chieflyrecollect is the row of old women sitting in front of it, each with atray of waxen tapers in her lap, and upbraiding me for my neglect of theopportunity to offer such a tribute to the saint. I know not whetherthis privilege is occasional or constant; within the church there was noappearance of a festival, and I see that the name-day of Saint Radegondeoccurs in August, so that the importunate old women sit there alwaysperhaps and deprive of its propriety the epithet I just applied to thisprovincial corner. In spite of the old women, however, I suspect thatthe place is lonely; and indeed it is perhaps the old women who havemade the desolation. The lion of Poitiers in the eyes of the natives is doubtless the Palaisde Justice, in the shadow of which the statue-guarded hotel, justmentioned, erects itself; and the gem of the court-house, which has aprosy modern front, with pillars and a high flight of steps, is thecurious _salle des pas perdus_, or central hall, out of which thedifferent tribunals open. This is a feature of every French court-house, and seems the result of a conviction that a palace of justice--theFrench deal in much finer names than we--should be in some degreepalatial. The great hall at Poitiers has a long pedigree, as its wallsdate back to the twelfth century and its open wooden roof, as well asthe remarkable trio of chimney-pieces at the right end of the room asyou enter, to the fifteenth. The three tall fireplaces, side by side, with a delicate gallery running along the top of them, constitute theoriginality of this ancient chamber, and make one think of the groupsthat must formerly have gathered there--of all the wet boot-soles, thetrickling doublets, the stiffened fingers, the rheumatic shanks, thatmust have been presented to such an incomparable focus of heat. To-day, I am afraid, these mighty hearths are for ever cold; justice is probablyadministered with the aid of a modern _calorifère_, and the walls of thepalace are perforated with regurgitating tubes. Behind and above thegallery that surmounts the three fireplaces are high Gothic windows, thetracery of which masks, in some sort, the chimneys; and in each angle ofthis and of the room to the right and left of the trio of chimneys is anopen-work spiral staircase, ascending to--I forget where; perhaps to theroof of the edifice. The whole side of the _salle_ is very lordly, andseems to express an unstinted hospitality, to extend the friendliest ofall invitations, to bid the whole world come and get warm. It was theinvention of John, Duke of Berry and Count of Poitou, about 1395. I givethis information on the authority of the Guide-Joanne, from which sourceI gather much other curious learning; as, for instance, that it was inthis building, when it had surely a very different front, that CharlesVII. Was proclaimed king in 1422; and that here Jeanne Darc wassubjected, in 1429, to the inquisition of sundry doctors and matrons. The most charming thing at Poitiers is simply the Promenade deBlossac--a small public garden at one end of the flat top of the hill. It has a happy look of the last century (having been arranged at thatperiod), and a beautiful sweep of view over the surrounding country, andespecially of the course of the little river Clain, which winds about apart of the base of the big mound of Poitiers. The limit of this dearlittle garden is formed, on the side that turns away from the town, bythe rampart erected in the fourteenth century and by its bigsemicircular bastions. This rampart, of great length, has a low parapet;you look over it at the charming little vegetable-gardens with which thebase of the hill appears exclusively to be garnished. The whole prospectis delightful, especially the details of the part just under the walls, at the end of the walk. Here the river makes a shining twist which apainter might have invented, and the side of the hill is terraced intoseveral hedges--a sort of tangle of small blooming patches and littlepavilions with peaked roofs and green shutters. It is idle to attempt toreproduce all this in words; it should be reproduced only inwater-colours. The reader, however, will already have remarked thatdisparity in these ineffectual pages, which are pervaded by the attemptto sketch without a palette or brushes. He will doubtless also be struckwith the grovelling vision which, on such a spot as the ramparts ofPoitiers, peoples itself with carrots and cabbages rather than withimages of the Black Prince and the captive king. I am not sure that inlooking out from the Promenade de Blossac you command the oldbattle-field; it is enough that it was not far off, and that the greatrout of Frenchmen poured into the walls of Poitiers, leaving on theground a number of the fallen equal to the little army (eight thousand)of the invader. I did think of the battle. I wondered, ratherhelplessly, where it had taken place; and I came away (as the readerwill see from the preceding sentence) without finding out. Thisindifference, however, was a result rather of a general dread ofmilitary topography than of a want of admiration of this particularvictory, which I have always supposed to be one of the most brillianton record. Indeed, I should be almost ashamed, and very much at a loss, to say what light it was that this glorious day seemed to me to haveleft for ever on the horizon, and why the very name of the place hadalways caused my blood gently to tingle. It is carrying the feeling ofrace to quite inscrutable lengths when a vague American permits himselfan emotion because more than five centuries ago, on French soil, onerapacious Frenchman got the better of another. Edward was a Frenchman aswell as John, and French were the cries that urged each of the hosts tothe fight. French is the beautiful motto graven round the image of theBlack Prince as he lies for ever at rest in the choir of Canterbury: _àla mort ne pensai-je mye_. Nevertheless, the victory of Poitiersdeclines to lose itself in these considerations; the sense of it is apart of our heritage, the joy of it a part of our imagination, and itfilters down through centuries and migrations till it titillates a NewYorker who forgets in his elation that he happens at that moment to beenjoying the hospitality of France. It was something done, I know nothow justly, for England; and what was done in the fourteenth century forEngland was done also for New York. [Illustration] Chapter xviii [Angoulême] If it was really for the sake of the Black Prince that I had stopped atPoitiers (for my prevision of Notre Dame la Grande and of the littletemple of St. John was of the dimmest), I ought to have stopped atAngoulême for the sake of David and Eve Séchard, of Lucien de Rubempréand of Madame de Bargeton, who when she wore a _toilette étudiée_sported a Jewish turban ornamented with an Eastern brooch, a scarf ofgauze, a necklace of cameos, and a robe of "painted muslin, " whateverthat may be; treating herself to these luxuries out of an income oftwelve thousand francs. The persons I have mentioned have not thatvagueness of identity which is the misfortune of historical characters;they are real, supremely real, thanks to their affiliation to the greatBalzac, who had invented an artificial reality which was as much betterthan the vulgar article as mock-turtle soup is than the liquid itemulates. The first time I read "Les Illusions Perdues" I should haverefused to believe that I was capable of passing the old capital ofAnjou without alighting to visit the Houmeau. But we never know what weare capable of till we are tested, as I reflected when I found myselflooking back at Angoulême from the window of the train just after we hademerged from the long tunnel that passes under the town. This tunnelperforates the hill on which, like Poitiers, Angoulême rears itself, andwhich gives it an elevation still greater than that of Poitiers. You mayhave a tolerable look at the cathedral without leaving the railwaycarriage, for it stands just above the tunnel and is exposed, muchforeshortened, to the spectator below. There is evidently a charmingwalk round the plateau of the town commanding those pretty views ofwhich Balzac gives an account. But the train whirled me away, and theseare my only impressions. The truth is that I had no need, just at thatmoment, of putting myself into communication with Balzac, for oppositeto me in the compartment were a couple of figures almost as vivid as theactors in the "Comédie Humaine. " One of these was a very genial anddirty old priest, and the other was a reserved and concentrated youngmonk--the latter (by which I mean a monk of any kind) being a rare sightto-day in France. This young man indeed was mitigatedly monastic. He hada big brown frock and cowl, but he had also a shirt and a pair of shoes;he had, instead of a hempen scourge round his waist, a stout leatherthong, and he carried with him a very profane little valise. He alsoread, from beginning to end, the _Figaro_ which the old priest, who haddone the same, presented to him; and he looked altogether as if, had henot been a monk, he would have made a distinguished officer ofengineers. When he was not reading the _Figaro_ he was conning his breviary oranswering, with rapid precision and with a deferential but discouragingdryness, the frequent questions of his companion, who was of quiteanother type. This worthy had a bored, good-natured, unbuttoned, expansive look; was talkative, restless, almost disreputably human. Hewas surrounded by a great deal of small luggage, and had scattered overthe carriage his books, his papers, and fragments of his lunch, and thecontents of an extraordinary bag which he kept beside him--a kind ofsecular reliquary--and which appeared to contain the odds and ends of alifetime, as he took from it successively a pair of slippers, an oldpadlock (which evidently did not belong to it), an opera-glass, acollection of almanacs, and a large sea-shell, which he very carefullyexamined. I think that if he had not been afraid of the young monk, whowas so much more serious than he, he would have held the shell to hisear like a child. Indeed, he was a very childish and delightful oldpriest, and his companion evidently thought him quite frivolous. But Iliked him the better of the two. He was not a country curé, but anecclesiastic of some rank, who had seen a good deal both of the churchand of the world; and if I too had not been afraid of his colleague, whoread the _Figaro_ as seriously as if it had been an encyclical, I shouldhave entered into conversation with him. All this while I was getting on to Bordeaux, where I permitted myself tospend three days. I am afraid I have next to nothing to show for them, and that there would be little profit in lingering on this episode, which is the less to be justified as I had in former years examinedBordeaux attentively enough. It contains a very good hotel--an hotel notgood enough, however, to keep you there for its own sake. For the rest, Bordeaux is a big, rich, handsome, imposing commercial town, with longrows of fine old eighteenth-century houses which overlook the yellowGaronne. I have spoken of the quays of Nantes as fine, but those ofBordeaux have a wider sweep and a still more architectural air. Theappearance of such a port as this makes the Anglo-Saxon tourist blushfor the sordid water-fronts of Liverpool and New York, which, with theirlarger activity, have so much more reason to be stately. Bordeaux givesa great impression of prosperous industries, and suggests delightfulideas, images of prune-boxes and bottled claret. As the focus ofdistribution of the best wine in the world, it is indeed a sacredcity--dedicated to the worship of Bacchus in the most discreet form. Thecountry all about it is covered with precious vineyards, sources offortune to their owners and of satisfaction to distant consumers: and asyou look over to the hills beyond the Garonne you see them, in theautumn sunshine, fretted with the rusty richness of this or thatimmortal _clos_. But the principal picture, within the town, is that ofthe vast curving quays, bordered with houses that look like the _hôtels_of farmers-general of the last century, and of the wide, tawny river, crowded with shipping and spanned by the largest of bridges. Some of thetypes on the water-side are of the sort that arrest a sketcher--figuresof stalwart, brown-faced Basques, such as I had seen of old in greatnumbers at Biarritz, with their loose circular caps, their whitesandals, their air of walking for a wager. Never was a tougher, a harderrace. They are not mariners nor watermen, but, putting questions oftemper aside, they are the best possible dock-porters. "Il s'y fait uncommerce terrible, " a _douanier_ said to me, as he looked up and downthe interminable docks; and such a place has indeed much to say of thewealth, the capacity for production, of France--the bright, cheerful, smokeless industry of the wonderful country which produces, above all, the agreeable things of life, and turns even its defeats and revolutionsinto gold. The whole town has an air of almost depressing opulence, anappearance which culminates in the great _place_ which surrounds theGrand-Théatre--an establishment of the highest style, encircled withcolumns, arcades, lamps, gilded cafés. One feels it to be a monument tothe virtue of the well-selected bottle. If I had not forbidden myself tolinger, I should venture to insist on this and, at the risk of beingcalled fantastic, trace an analogy between good claret and the bestqualities of the French mind; pretend that there is a taste of soundBordeaux in all the happiest manifestations of that fine organ, andthat, correspondingly, there is a touch of French reason, Frenchcompleteness, in a glass of Pontet-Canet. The danger of such anexcursion would lie mainly in its being so open to the reader to takethe ground from under my feet by saying that good claret doesn't exist. To this I should have no reply whatever. I should be unable to tell himwhere to find it. I certainly didn't find it at Bordeaux, where I dranka most vulgar fluid; and it is of course notorious that a large part ofmankind is occupied in vainly looking for it. There was a great pretenceof putting it forward at the Exhibition which was going on at Bordeauxat the time of my visit, an "exposition philomathique, " lodged in acollection of big temporary buildings in the Allées d'Orléans, andregarded by the Bordelais for the moment as the most brilliant featureof their city. Here were pyramids of bottles, mountains [Illustration: BORDEAUX--THE QUAY] of bottles, to say nothing of cases and cabinets of bottles. Thecontemplation of these glittering tiers was of course not veryconvincing; and indeed the whole arrangement struck me as a highimpertinence. Good wine is not an optical pleasure, it is an inwardemotion; and if there was a chamber of degustation on the premises, Ifailed to discover it. It was not in the search for it, indeed, that Ispent half an hour in this bewildering bazaar. Like all "expositions, "it seemed to me to be full of ugly things, and gave one a portentousidea of the quantity of rubbish that man carries with him on his coursethrough the ages. Such an amount of luggage for a journey after all soshort! There were no individual objects; there was nothing but dozensand hundreds, all machine-made and expressionless, in spite of therepeated grimace, the conscious smartness, of "the last new thing, " thatwas stamped on all of them. The fatal facility of the French _article_becomes at last as irritating as the refrain of a popular song. The poor"Indiens Galibis" struck me as really more interesting--a group ofstunted savages who formed one of the attractions of the place and wereconfined in a pen in the open air, with a rabble of people pushing andsqueezing, hanging over the barrier, to look at them. They had nogrimace, no pretension to be new, no desire to catch your eye. Theylooked at their visitors no more than they looked at each other, andseemed ancient, indifferent, terribly bored. [Illustration] Chapter xix [Toulouse] There is much entertainment in the journey through the wide, smilinggarden of Gascony; I speak of it as I took it in going from Bordeaux toToulouse. It is the south, quite the south, and had for the presentnarrator its full measure of the charm he is always determined to findin countries that may even by courtesy be said to appertain to the sun. It was, moreover, the happy and genial view of these mild latitudes, which, goodness knows, often have a dreariness of their own; a landteeming with corn and wine and speaking everywhere (that is everywherethe phylloxera had not laid it waste) of wealth and plenty. The roadruns constantly near the Garonne, touching now and then its slow, brown, rather sullen stream, a sullenness that encloses great dangers anddisasters. The traces of the horrible floods of 1875 have disappeared, and the land smiles placidly enough while it waits for anotherimmersion. Toulouse, at the period I speak of, was up to its middle (andin places above it) in water, and looks still as if it had beenthoroughly soaked--as if it had faded and shrivelled with a longsteeping. The fields and copses, of course, are more forgiving. Therailway line follows as well the charming Canal du Midi, which is aspretty as a river, barring the straightness, and here and there occupiesthe foreground, beneath a screen of dense, tall trees, while the Garonnetakes a larger and more irregular course a little way beyond it. Peoplewho are fond of canals--and, speaking from the pictorial standpoint, Ihold the taste to be most legitimate--will delight in this admirablespecimen of the class, which has a very interesting history, not to benarrated here. On the other side of the road (the left), all the way, runs a long, low line of hills, or rather one continuous hill, orperpetual cliff, with a straight top, in the shape of a ledge of rock, which might pass for a ruined wall. I am afraid the reader will losepatience with my habit of constantly referring to the landscape of Italyas if that were the measure of the beauty of every other. Yet I am stillmore afraid that I cannot apologise for it, and must leave it in itsculpable nakedness. It is an idle habit; but the reader will long sincehave discovered that this was an idle journey and that I give myimpressions as they came to me. It came to me, then, that in all thisview there was something transalpine, with a greater smartness andfreshness and much less elegance and languor. This impression wasoccasionally deepened by the appearance, on the long eminence of which Ispeak, of a village, a church, a château, that seemed to look down atthe plain from over the ruined wall. The perpetual vines, thebright-faced flat-roofed houses, covered with tiles, the softness andsweetness of the light and air, recalled the prosier portions of theLombard plain. Toulouse itself has a little of this Italian expression, but not enough to give a colour to its dark, dirty, crooked streets, which are irregular without being eccentric, and which, if it were notfor the superb church of Saint-Sernin, would be quite destitute ofmonuments. I have already alluded to the way in which the names of certain placesimpose themselves on the mind, and I must add that of Toulouse to thelist of expressive appellations. It certainly evokes a vision--suggestssomething highly _méridional_. But the city, it must be confessed, isless pictorial than the word, in spite of the Place du Capitole, inspite of the quay of the Garonne, in spite of the curious cloister ofthe old museum. What justifies the images that are latent in the word isnot the aspect, but the history, of the town. The hotel to which thewell-advised traveller will repair stands in a corner of the Place duCapitole, which is the heart and centre of Toulouse, and which bears avague and inexpensive resemblance to Piazza Castello at Turin. TheCapitol, with a wide modern face, occupies one side, and, like thepalace at Turin, looks across at a high arcade, under which the hotels, the principal shops, and the lounging citizens are gathered. The shops, are probably better than the Turinese, but the people are not so good. Stunted, shabby, rather vitiated looking, they have none of the personalrichness of the sturdy Piedmontese; and I will take this occasion toremark that in the course of a journey of several weeks in the Frenchprovinces I rarely encountered a well-dressed male. Can it be possiblethat republics are unfavourable to a certain attention to one's bootsand one's beard? I risk this somewhat futile inquiry because theproportion of neat coats and trousers seemed to be about the same inFrance and in my native land. It was notably lower than in England andin Italy, and even warranted the supposition that most good provincialshave their chin shaven and their boots blacked but once a week. I hastento add, lest my observation should appear to be of a sadly superficialcharacter, that the manners and conversation of these gentlemen bore(whenever I had occasion to appreciate them) no relation to the state oftheir chin and their boots. They were almost always marked by an extremeamenity. At Toulouse there was the strongest temptation to speak topeople simply for the entertainment of hearing them reply with thatcurious, that fascinating accent of the Languedoc, which appears toabound in final consonants and leads the Toulousians to say _bien-g_ and_maison-g_ like Englishmen learning French. It is as if they talked withtheir teeth rather than with their tongue. I find in my note-book aphrase in regard to Toulouse which is perhaps a little ill-natured, butwhich I will transcribe as it stands: "The oddity is that the placeshould be both animated and dull. A big, brown-skinned population, clattering about in a flat, tortuous town, which produces nothingwhatever that I can discover. Except the church of Saint-Sernin and thefine old court of the Hôtel d'Assézat, Toulouse has no architecture; thehouses are for the most part of brick, of a greyish-red colour, and haveno particular style. The brickwork of the place is in fact verypoor--inferior to that of the North Italian towns and quite wanting inthe wealth of tone which this homely material takes on in general in theclimates of dampness and greenness. " And then my note-book goes on tonarrate a little visit to the Capitol, which was soon made, as thebuilding was in course of repair and half the rooms were closed. [Illustration] Chapter xx [Toulouse: the Capitol] The history of Toulouse is detestable, saturated with blood and perfidy;and the ancient custom of the Floral Games, grafted upon all sorts ofinternecine traditions, seems, with its false pastoralism, its mockchivalry, its display of fine feelings, to set off rather than tomitigate these horrors. The society was founded in the fourteenthcentury, and it has held annual meetings ever since--meetings at whichpoems in the fine old _langue d'oc_ are declaimed and a blushinglaureate is chosen. This business takes place in the Capitol, before thechief magistrate of the town, who is known as the _capitoul_, and of allthe pretty women as well--a class very numerous at Toulouse. It isunusual to present a finer person than that of the portress whopretended to show me the apartments in which the Floral Games are held;a big, brown, expansive woman, still in the prime of life, with aspeaking eye, an extraordinary assurance, and a pair of magentastockings, which were inserted into the neatest and most polished littleblack sabots, and which, as she clattered up the stairs before me, lavishly displaying them, made her look like the heroine of an_opéra-bouffe_. Her talk was all in _n_'s, _g_'s and _d_'s, and in mute_e_'s strongly accented, as _autré_, _théâtré_, _splendidé_--the lastbeing an epithet she applied to everything the Capitol contained, andespecially to a horrible picture representing the famous ClémenceIsaure, the reputed foundress of the poetical contest, presiding on oneof these occasions. I wondered whether Clémence Isaure had been anythinglike this terrible Toulousaine of to-day, who would have been a capitalfigure-head for a floral game. The lady in whose honour the picture Ihave just mentioned was painted is a somewhat mythical personage, andshe is not to be found in the "Biographie Universelle. " She is, however, a very graceful myth; and if she never existed, her statue at leastdoes--a shapeless effigy transferred to the Capitol from the so-calledtomb of Clémence in the old church of La Daurade. The great hall inwhich the Floral Games are held was encumbered with scaffoldings, and Iwas unable to admire the long series of busts of the bards who have wonprizes and the portraits of all the capitouls of Toulouse. As acompensation I was introduced to a big bookcase filled with the poemsthat have been crowned since the days of the troubadours (a portentouscollection), and the big butcher's knife with which, according to thelegend, Henry, Duke of Montmorency, who had conspired against the greatcardinal with Gaston of Orleans and Mary de'Medici, was, in 1632, beheaded on this spot by the order of Richelieu. With these objects theinterest of the Capitol was exhausted. The building indeed has not thegrandeur of its name, which is a sort of promise that the visitor willfind some sensible embodiment of the old Roman tradition that oncenourished in this part of France. It is inferior in impressiveness tothe other three famous Capitols of the modern world--that of Rome (if Imay call the present structure modern) and those of Washington andAlbany! The only Roman remains at Toulouse are to be found in the museum--a veryinteresting establishment, which I was condemned to see as imperfectlyas I had seen the Capitol. It was being rearranged; and the gallery ofpaintings, which is the least interesting feature, was the only partthat was not upside-down. The pictures are mainly of the modern Frenchschool, and I remember nothing but a powerful though disagreeablespecimen of Henner, who paints the human body, and paints it so well, with a brush dipped in blackness; and, placed among the paintings, abronze replica of the charming young David of Mercié. These things havebeen set out in the church of an old monastery, long since suppressed, and the rest of the collection occupies the cloisters. These are two innumber--a small one, which you enter first from the street, and a veryvast and elegant one beyond it, which, with its light gothic arches andslim columns (of the fourteenth century), its broad walk, its littlegarden with old tombs and statues in the centre, is by far the mostpicturesque, the most sketchable, spot in Toulouse. It must be doubly sowhen the Roman busts, inscriptions, slabs, and sarcophagi are rangedalong the walls; it must indeed (to compare small things with great, andas the judicious Murray remarks) bear a certain resemblance to the CampoSanto at Pisa. But these things are absent now; the cloister is alitter of confusion, and its treasures have been stowed away confusedlyin sundry inaccessible rooms. The custodian attempted to console me bytelling me that when they are exhibited again it will be on a scientificbasis and with an order and regularity of which they were formerlyinnocent. But I was not consoled. I wanted simply the spectacle, thepicture, and I didn't care in the least for the classification. OldRoman fragments exposed to light in the open air, under a southern sky, in a quadrangle round a garden, have an immortal charm simply in theirgeneral effect; and the charm is all the greater when the soil of thevery place has yielded them up. [Illustration] Chapter xxi [Toulouse: Saint-Sernin] My real consolation was an hour I spent in Saint-Sernin, one of thenoblest churches in southern France, and easily the first among those ofToulouse. This great structure, a masterpiece of twelfth-centuryromanesque and dedicated to Saint Saturninus--the Toulousains haveabbreviated--is, I think, alone worth a journey to Toulouse. What makesit so is the extraordinary seriousness of its interior; no other termoccurs to me as expressing so well the character of its clear grey nave. As a general thing, I favour little the fashion of attributing moralqualities to buildings; I shrink from talking about tender cornices andsincere campanili; but one feels that one can scarce get on withoutimputing some sort of morality to Saint-Sernin. As it stands to-day, thechurch has been completely restored by Viollet-le-Duc. The exterior isof brick, and has little charm save that of a tower of four rows ofarches, narrowing together as they ascend. The nave is of great lengthand height, the barrel-roof of stone, the effect of the round arches andpillars in the triforium especially fine. There are two low aisles oneither side. The choir is very deep and narrow; it seems to closetogether, and looks as if it were meant for intensely earnest rites. Thetransepts are most noble, especially the arches of the second tier. Thewhole church is narrow for its length and is singularly complete andhomogeneous. As I say all this I feel that I quite fail to give animpression of its manly gravity, its strong proportions, or of thelonesome look of its renovated stones as I sat there while the Octobertwilight gathered. It is a real work of art, a high conception. Thecrypt, into which I was eventually led captive by an importunatesacristan, is quite another affair, though indeed I suppose it may alsobe spoken of as a work of art. It is a rich museum of relics, andcontains the head of Saint Thomas Aquinas wrapped up in a napkin andexhibited in a glass case. The sacristan took a lamp and guided meabout, presenting me to one saintly remnant after another. Theimpression was grotesque, but some of the objects were contained incurious old cases of beaten silver and brass: these things at least, which looked as if they had been transmitted from the early church, werevenerable. There was, however, a kind of wholesale sanctity about theplace which overshot the mark; it pretends to be one of the holiestspots in the world. The effect is spoiled by the way [Illustration: TOULOUSE SAINT-SERNIN (THE TRANSEPT)] the sacristans hang about and offer to take you into it for ten sous--Iwas accosted by two and escaped from another--and by the familiar mannerin which you pop in and out. This episode rather broke the charm ofSaint-Sernin, so that I took my departure and went in search of thecathedral. It was scarcely worth finding, and struck me as an odd, dislocated fragment. The front consists only of a portal beside which atall brick tower of a later period has been erected. The nave waswrapped in dimness, with a few scattered lamps. I could only distinguishan immense vault, like a high cavern, without aisles. Here and there inthe gloom was a kneeling figure; the whole place was mysterious andlopsided. The choir was curtained off; it appeared not to correspondwith the nave--that is, not to have the same axis. The only otherecclesiastical impression I gathered at Toulouse came to me in thechurch of La Daurade, of which the front, on the quay by the Garonne, was closed with scaffoldings; so that one entered it from behind, whereit is completely masked by houses, through a door which has at first notraceable connection with it. It is a vast, high, modernised, heavilydecorated church, dimly lighted at all times, I should suppose, andenriched by the shades of evening at the time I looked into it. Iperceived that it consisted mainly of a large square, beneath a dome, inthe centre of which a single person--a lady--was praying with the utmostabsorption. The manner of access to the church interposed such anobstacle to the outer profanities that I had a sense of intruding andpresently withdrew, carrying with me a picture of the vast, stillinterior, the gilded roof gleaming in the twilight, and the solitaryworshipper. What was she praying for, and was she not almost afraid toremain there alone? For the rest, the picturesque at Toulouse consistsprincipally of the walk beside the Garonne, which is spanned, to thefaubourg of Saint-Cyprien, by a stout brick bridge. This hapless suburb, the baseness of whose site is noticeable, lay for days under the waterat the time of the last inundations. The Garonne had almost mounted tothe roofs of the houses, and the place continues to present a blighted, frightened look. Two or three persons with whom I had some conversationspoke of that time as a memory of horror. I have not done with myItalian comparisons; I shall never have done with them. I am thereforefree to say that in the way in which Toulouse looks out on the Garonnethere was something that reminded me vaguely of the way in which Pisalooks out on the Arno. The red-faced houses--all of brick--along thequay have a mixture of brightness and shabbiness, as well as the fashionof the open _loggia_ in the top-storey. The river, with another bridgeor two, might be the Arno, and the buildings on the other side of it--ahospital, a suppressed convent--dip their feet into it with realsouthern cynicism. I have spoken of the old Hôtel d'Assézat as the besthouse at Toulouse; with the exception of the cloister of the museum, itis the only "bit" I remember. It has fallen from the state of a nobleresidence of the sixteenth century to that of a warehouse and a set ofoffices; but a certain dignity lingers in its melancholy court, which isdivided from the street by a gateway that is still imposing and in whicha clambering vine and a red Virginia-creeper were suspended to the rustywalls of brick and stone. The most interesting house at Toulouse is far from being the moststriking. At the door of No. 50 Rue des Filatiers, a featureless, solidstructure, was found [Illustration: TOULOUSE--THE GARONNE] hanging, one autumn evening, the body of the young Marc-Antoine Calas, whose ill-inspired suicide was to be the first act of a tragedy sohorrible. The fanaticism aroused in the townsfolk by this incident; theexecution by torture of Jean Calas, accused as a Protestant of havinghanged his son, who had gone over to the Church of Rome; the ruin of thefamily; the claustration of the daughters; the flight of the widow toSwitzerland; her introduction to Voltaire; the excited zeal of thatincomparable partisan and the passionate persistence with which, fromyear to year, he pursued a reversal of judgment till at last he obtainedit and devoted the tribunal of Toulouse to execration and the name ofthe victims to lasting wonder and pity--these things form part of one ofthe most interesting and touching episodes of the social history of theeighteenth century. The story has the fatal progression, the darkrigour, of one of the tragic dramas of the Greeks. Jean Calas, advancedin life, blameless, bewildered, protesting his innocence, had beenbroken on the wheel; and the sight of his decent dwelling, which broughthome to me all that had been suffered there, spoiled for me, for half anhour, the impression of Toulouse. [Illustration] Chapter xxii [Carcassonne] I spent but a few hours at Carcassonne; but those hours had a roundedfelicity, and I cannot do better than transcribe from my note-book thelittle record made at the moment. Vitiated as it may be by crudity andincoherency, it has at any rate the freshness of a great emotion. Thisis the best quality that a reader may hope to extract from a narrativein which "useful information" and technical lore even of the mostgeneral sort are completely absent. For Carcassonne is moving, beyond adoubt; and the traveller who in the course of a little tour in Francemay have felt himself urged, in melancholy moments, to say that on thewhole the disappointments are as numerous as the satisfactions, mustadmit that there can be nothing better than this. The country after you leave Toulouse continues to be charming; the moreso that it merges its flatness in the distant Cévennes on one side, andon the other, far away on your right, in the richer range of thePyrenees. Olives and cypresses, pergolas and vines, terraces on theroofs of houses, soft, iridescent mountains, a warm yellow light--whatmore could the difficult tourist want? He left his luggage at thestation, warily determined to look at the inn before committing himselfto it. It was so evident (even to a cursory glance) that it might easilyhave been much better, that he simply took his way to the town, with thewhole of a superb afternoon before him. When I say the town, I mean thetowns; there being two at Carcassonne, perfectly distinct, and each withexcellent claims to the title. They have settled the matter betweenthem, however, and the elder, the shrine of pilgrimage, to which theother is but a stepping-stone, or even, as I may say, a humble door-mat, takes the name of the Cité. You see nothing of the Cité from thestation; it is masked by the agglomeration of the _ville-basse_, whichis relatively (but only relatively) new. A wonderful avenue of acaciasleads to it from the station--leads past it, rather, and conducts you toa little high-backed bridge over the Aude, beyond which, detached anderect, a distinct mediæval silhouette, the Cité presents itself. Like arival shop on the invidious side of a street, it has "no connection"with the establishment across the way, although the two places areunited (if old Carcassonne may be said to be united to anything) by avague little rustic faubourg. Perched on its solid pedestal, the perfectdetachment of the Cité is what first strikes you. To take leave, withoutdelay, of the _ville-basse_, I may say that the splendid acacias I havementioned flung a summerish dusk over the place, in which a fewscattered remains of stout walls and big bastions looked venerable andpicturesque. A little boulevard winds round the town, planted withtrees and garnished with more benches than I ever saw provided by asoft-hearted municipality. This precinct had a warm, lazy, dusty, southern look, as if the people sat out-of-doors a great deal andwandered about in the stillness of summer nights. The figure of theelder town at these hours must be ghostly enough on its neighbouringhill. Even by day it has the air of a vignette of Gustave Doré, acouplet of Victor Hugo. It is almost too perfect--as if it were anenormous model placed on a big green table at a museum. A steep, pavedway, grass-grown like all roads where vehicles never pass, stretches upto it in the sun. It has a double enceinte, complete outer walls andcomplete inner (these, elaborately fortified, are the more curious); andthis congregation of ramparts, towers, bastions, battlements, barbicans, is as fantastic and romantic as you please. The approach I mention hereleads to the gate that looks toward Toulouse--the Porte de l'Aude. Thereis a second, on the other side, called, I believe, the PorteNarbonnaise, a magnificent gate, flanked with towers thick and tall, defended by elaborate outworks; and these two apertures alone admit youto the place--putting aside a small sally-port, protected by a greatbastion, on the quarter that looks toward the Pyrenees. As a votary, always, in the first instance, of a general impression, Iwalked all round the outer enceinte--a process on the very face of itentertaining. I took to the right of the Porte de l'Aude, withoutentering it, where the old moat has been filled in. The filling-in ofthe moat has created a grassy level at the foot of the big grey towers, which, rising at frequent intervals, stretch their stiff curtain ofstone from point to point: the curtain drops without a fold upon thequiet grass, which was dotted here and there with a humble native dozingaway the golden afternoon. The natives of the elder Carcassonne are allhumble; for the core of the Cité has shrunken and decayed, and there islittle life among the ruins. A few tenacious labourers who work in theneighbouring fields or in the _ville-basse_, and sundry octogenarians ofboth sexes, who are dying where they have lived and contribute much tothe pictorial effect--these are the principal inhabitants. The processof converting the place from an irresponsible old town into a conscious"specimen" has of course been attended with eliminations; the populationhas, as a general thing, been restored away. I should lose no time insaying that restoration is the great mark of the Cité. M. Viollet-le-Duchas worked his will upon it, put it into perfect order, revived thefortifications in every detail. I do not pretend to judge theperformance, carried out on a scale and in a spirit which really imposethemselves on the imagination. Few architects have had such a chance, and M. Viollet-le-Duc must have been the envy of the whole restoringfraternity. The image of a more crumbling Carcassonne rises in the mind, and there is no doubt that forty years ago the place was more affecting. On the other hand, as we see it to-day it is a wonderful evocation; andif there is a great deal of new in the old, there is plenty of old inthe new. The repaired crenellations, the inserted patches of the wallsof the outer circle, sufficiently express this commixture. My walkbrought me into full view of the Pyrenees, which, now that the sun hadbegun to sink and the shadows to grow long, had a wonderful violet glow. The platform at the base of the walls has a greater width on this side, and it made the scene more complete. Two or three old crones hadcrawled out of the Porte Narbonnaise to examine the advancing visitor;and a very ancient peasant, lying there with his back against a tower, was tending half a dozen lean sheep. A poor man in a very old blouse, crippled and with crutches lying beside him, had been brought out andplaced on a stool, where he enjoyed the afternoon as best he might. Helooked so ill and so patient that I spoke to him; found that his legswere paralysed and he was quite helpless. He had formerly been sevenyears in the army, and had made the campaign of Mexico with Bazaine. Born in the old Cité, he had come back there to end his days. It seemedstrange, as he sat there with those romantic walls behind him and thegreat picture of the Pyrenees in front, to think that he had been acrossthe seas to the far-away new world, had made part of a famousexpedition, and was now a cripple at the gate of the mediæval city wherehe had played as a child. All this struck me as a great deal of historyfor so modest a figure--a poor little figure that could only justunclose its palm for a small silver coin. He was not the only acquaintance I made at Carcassonne. I had notpursued my circuit of the walls much farther when I encountered a personof quite another type, of whom I asked some question which had just thenpresented itself, and who proved to be the very genius of the spot. Hewas a sociable son of the _ville-basse_, a gentleman, and, as Iafterwards learned, an employé at the prefecture--a person, in short, much esteemed at Carcassonne. (I may say all this, as he will never readthese pages. ) He had been ill for a month, and in the company of hislittle dog was taking his first airing; in his own phrase, he was_amoureux-fou de la Cité_--he could lose no time in coming back to it. He talked of it indeed as a lover, and, giving me for half an hour theadvantage of his company, showed me all the points of the place. (Ispeak here always of the outer enceinte; you penetrate to theinner--which is the specialty of Carcassonne and the greatcuriosity--only by application at the lodge of the regular custodian, aremarkable functionary, who, half an hour later, when I had beenintroduced to him by my friend the amateur, marched me over thefortifications with a tremendous accompaniment of dates and technicalterms. ) My companion pointed out to me in particular the traces ofdifferent periods in the structure of the walls. There is a portentousamount of history embedded in them, beginning with Romans and Visigoths;here and there are marks of old breaches hastily repaired. We passedinto the town--into that part of it not included in the citadel. It isthe queerest and most fragmentary little place in the world, aseverything save the fortifications is being suffered to crumble away inorder that the spirit of M. Viollet-le-Duc alone may pervade it and itmay subsist simply as a magnificent shell. As the leases of the wretchedlittle houses fall in, the ground is cleared of them; and a mumbling oldwoman approached me in the course of my circuit, inviting me to condolewith her on the disappearance of so many of the hovels which in the lastfew hundred years (since the collapse of Carcassonne as a stronghold)had attached themselves to the base of the walls, in the space betweenthe two circles. These habitations, constructed of materials taken fromthe ruins, nestled there snugly enough. This intermediate space hadtherefore become a kind of street, which has crumbled in turn, as thefortress has grown up again. There are other streets beside, verydiminutive and vague, where you pick your way over heaps of rubbish andbecome conscious of unexpected faces looking at you out of windows asdetached as the cherubic heads. The most definite thing in the place wasthe little café, where the waiters, I think, must be the ghosts of theold Visigoths; the most definite, that is, after the little château andthe little cathedral. Everything in the Cité is little; you can walkround the walls in twenty minutes. On the drawbridge of the château, which, with a picturesque old face, flanking towers, and a dry moat, isto-day simply a bare _caserne_, lounged half a dozen soldiers, unusuallysmall. Nothing could be more odd than to see these objects enclosed in areceptacle which has much of the appearance of an enormous toy. The Citéand its population vaguely reminded me of an immense Noah's ark. [Illustration] Chapter xxiii [Carcassonne] Carcassone dates from the Roman occupation of Gaul. The place commandedone of the great roads into Spain, and in the fourth century Romans andFranks ousted each other from such a point of vantage. In the year 436Theodoric King of the Visigoths superseded both these parties; and itwas during his occupation that the inner enceinte was raised upon theruins of the Roman fortifications. Most of the Visigoth towers that arestill erect are seated upon Roman substructions which appear to havebeen formed hastily, probably at the moment of the Frankish invasion. The authors of these solid defences, though occasionally disturbed, heldCarcassonne and the neighbouring country, in which they had establishedtheir kingdom of Septimania, till the year 713, when they were expelledby the Moors of Spain, who ushered in an unillumined period of fourcenturies, of which no traces remain. These facts I derive from asource no more recondite than a pamphlet by M. Viollet-le-Duc--a veryluminous description of the fortifications, which you may buy from theaccomplished custodian. The writer makes a jump to the year 1209, whenCarcassonne, then forming part of the realm of the viscounts of Béziersand infected by the Albigensian heresy, was besieged, in the name of thePope, by the terrible Simon de Montfort and his army of crusaders. Simonwas accustomed to success, and the town succumbed in the course of afortnight. Thirty-one years later, having passed into the hands of theKing of France, it was again besieged by the young Raymond de Trincavel, the last of the viscounts of Béziers; and of this siege M. Viollet-le-Duc gives a long and minute account, which the visitor whohas a head for such things may follow, with the brochure in hand, on thefortifications themselves. The young Raymond de Trincavel, baffled andrepulsed, retired at the end of twenty-four days. Saint Louis and Philipthe Bold, in the thirteenth century, multiplied the defences ofCarcassonne, which was one of the bulwarks of their kingdom on theSpanish quarter; and from this time forth, being regarded asimpregnable, the place had nothing to fear. It was not even attacked;and when in 1355 Edward the Black Prince marched into it, theinhabitants had opened the gates to the conqueror before whom allLanguedoc was prostrate. I am not one of those who, as I said just now, have a head for such things, and having extracted these few facts, hadmade all the use of M. Viollet-le-Duc's pamphlet of which I was capable. I have mentioned that my obliging friend the _amoureux-fou_ handed meover to the doorkeeper of the citadel. I should add that I was at firstcommitted [Illustration: CARCASSONNE. ] to the wife of this functionary, a stout peasant-woman, who took a keydown from a nail, conducted me to a postern door, and ushered me intothe presence of her husband. Having just begun his rounds with a partyof four persons, he was not many steps in advance. I added myselfperforce to this party, which was not brilliantly composed, except thattwo of its members were gendarmes in full toggery, who announced in thecourse of our tour that they had been stationed for a year atCarcassonne and had never before had the curiosity to come up to theCité. There was something brilliant certainly in that. The _gardien_ wasan extraordinarily typical little Frenchman, who struck me even moreforcibly than the wonders of the inner enceinte; and as I am bound toassume, at whatever cost to my literary vanity, that there is not theslightest danger of his reading these remarks, I may treat him as publicproperty. With his diminutive stature and his perpendicular spirit, hisflushed face, expressive protuberant eyes, high peremptory voice, extreme volubility, lucidity and neatness of utterance, he reminded meof the gentry who figure in the revolutions of his native land. If hewas not a fierce little Jacobin, he ought to have been, for I am surethere were many men of his pattern on the Committee of Public Safety. Heknew absolutely what he was about, understood the place thoroughly, andconstantly reminded his audience of what he himself had done in the wayof excavations and reparations. He described himself as the brother ofthe architect of the work actually going forward (that which has beendone since the death of M. Viollet-le-Duc, I suppose he meant), and thisfact was more illustrative than all the others. It reminded me, as oneis reminded at every turn, of the democratic conditions of French life:a man of the people, with a wife _en bonnet_, extremely intelligent, full of special knowledge, and yet remaining essentially of the peopleand showing his intelligence with a kind of ferocity, of defiance. Sucha personage helps one to understand the red radicalism of France, therevolutions, the barricades, the sinister passion for theories. (I donot, of course, take upon myself to say that the individual Idescribe--who can know nothing of the liberties I am taking with him--isactually devoted to these ideals; I only mean that many such devoteesmust have his qualities. ) In just the _nuance_ that I have tried toindicate here it is a terrible pattern of man. Permeated in a highdegree by civilisation, it is yet untouched by the desire which onefinds in the Englishman, in proportion as he rises in the world, toapproximate to the figure of the gentleman. On the other hand, a_netteté_, a faculty of exposition, such as the English gentleman israrely either blessed or cursed with. This brilliant, this suggestive warden of Carcassonne marched us aboutfor an hour, haranguing, explaining, illustrating as he went; it was acomplete little lecture, such as might have been delivered at the LowellInstitute, on the manner in which a first-rate _place forte_ used to beattacked and defended. Our peregrinations made it very clear thatCarcassonne was impregnable; it is impossible to imagine without havingseen them such refinements of immurement, such ingenuities ofresistance. We passed along the battlements and _chemins de ronde_, ascended and descended towers, crawled under arches, peered out ofloopholes, lowered ourselves into dungeons, halted in all sorts of tightplaces while the purpose of something or other was [Illustration: CARCASSONNE] described to us. It was very curious, very interesting; above all it wasvery pictorial, and involved perpetual peeps into the little crooked, crumbling, sunny, grassy, empty Cité. In places, as you stand upon it, the great towered and embattled enceinte produces an illusion; it looksas if it were still equipped and defended. One vivid challenge, at anyrate, it flings down before you; it calls upon you to make up your mindon the matter of restoration. For myself I have no hesitation; I preferin every case the ruined, however ruined, to the reconstructed, howeversplendid. What is left is more precious than what is added; the one ishistory, the other is fiction; and I like the former the better of thetwo--it is so much more romantic. One is positive, so far as it goes;the other fills up the void with things more dead than the void itself, inasmuch as they have never had life. After that I am free to say thatthe restoration of Carcassonne is a splendid achievement. The littlecustodian dismissed us at last, after having, as usual, inducted us intothe inevitable repository of photographs. These photographs are a greatnuisance all over the Midi. They are exceedingly bad for the most part;and the worst--those in the form of the hideous little_album-panorama_--are thrust upon you at every turn. They are a kind oftax that you must pay; the best way is to pay to be let off. It was notto be denied that there was a relief in separating from our accomplishedguide, whose manner of imparting information reminded me of theenergetic process by which I had seen mineral waters bottled. All thiswhile the afternoon had grown more lovely; the sunset had deepened, thehorizon of hills grown purple; the mass of the Canigou became moredelicate, yet more distinct. The day had so far faded that the interiorof the little cathedral was wrapped in twilight, into which the glowingwindows projected something of their colour. This church has high beautyand value, but I will spare the reader a presentation of details which Imyself had no opportunity to master. It consists of a romanesque nave, of the end of the eleventh century, and a Gothic choir and transepts ofthe beginning of the fourteenth; and, shut up in its citadel like aprecious casket in a cabinet, it seems--or seemed at that hour--to havea sort of double sanctity. After leaving it and passing out of the twocircles of walls, I treated myself, in the most infatuated manner, toanother walk round the Cité. It is certainly this general impressionthat is most striking--the impression from outside, where the wholeplace detaches itself at once from the landscape. In the warm southerndusk it looked more than ever like a city in a fairy tale. To make thething perfect, a white young moon, in its first quarter, came out andhung just over the dark silhouette. It was hard to come away--toincommode one's self for anything so vulgar as a railway train; I wouldgladly have spent the evening in revolving round the walls ofCarcassonne. But I had in a measure engaged to proceed to Narbonne, andthere was a certain magic in that name which gave me strength--Narbonne, the richest city in Roman Gaul. [Illustration] Chapter xxiv [Narbonne] At Narbonne I took up my abode at the house of a _serrurier mécanicien_, and was very thankful for the accommodation. It was my misfortune toarrive at this ancient city late at night, on the eve of market-day; andmarket-day at Narbonne is a very serious affair. The inns, on thisoccasion, are stuffed with wine-dealers; for the country round about, dedicated almost exclusively to Bacchus, has hitherto escaped thephylloxera. This deadly enemy of the grape is encamped over the Midi ina hundred places; blighted vineyards and ruined proprietors being quitethe order of the day. The signs of distress are more frequent as youadvance into Provence, many of the vines being laid under water in thehope of washing the plague away. There are healthy regions still, however, and the vintners find plenty to do at Narbonne. The traffic inwine appeared to be the sole thought of the Narbonnais; every one Ispoke to had something to say about the harvest of gold that bloomedunder its influence. "C'est inoui, monsieur, l'argent qu'il y a dans cepays. Des gens à qui la vente de leur vin rapporte jusqu'à 500, 000francs par an. " That little speech addressed to me by a gentleman at theinn gives the note of these revelations. It must be said that there waslittle in the appearance either of the town or of its population tosuggest the possession of such treasures. Narbonne is a _sale petiteville_ in all the force of the term, and my first impression on arrivingthere was an extreme regret that I had not remained for the night at thelovely Carcassonne. My journey from that delectable spot lasted a coupleof hours and was performed in darkness--a darkness not so dense, however, but that I was able to make out, as we passed it, the greatfigure of Béziers, whose ancient roofs and towers, clustered on a goodlyhill-top, looked as fantastic as you please. I know not what appearanceBéziers may present by day, but by night it has quite the grand air. Onissuing from the station at Narbonne I found that the only vehicle inwaiting was a kind of bastard tramcar, a thing shaped as if it had beenmeant to go upon rails; that is, equipped with small wheels, placedbeneath it, and with a platform at either end, but destined to rattleover the stones like the most vulgar of omnibuses. To complete theoddity of this conveyance, it was under the supervision, not of aconductor, but of a conductress. A fair young woman with a pouchsuspended from her girdle had command of the platform; and as soon asthe car was full she jolted us into the town through clouds of thethickest dust I ever have swallowed. I have had occasion to speak ofthe activity of women in France--of the way they are always in theascendant; and here was a signal example of their general utility. Theyoung lady I have mentioned conveyed her whole company to the wretchedlittle Hôtel de France, where it is to be hoped that some of them founda lodging. For myself, I was informed that the place was crowded fromcellar to attic, and that its inmates were sleeping three or four in aroom. At Carcassonne I should have had a bad bed, but at Narbonne, apparently, I was to have no bed at all. I passed an hour or two of flatsuspense while fate settled the question of whether I should go on toPerpignan, return to Béziers, or still discover a modest couch atNarbonne. I shall not have suffered in vain, however, if my exampleserves to deter other travellers from alighting unannounced at that cityon a Wednesday evening. The retreat to Béziers, not attempted in time, proved impossible, and I was assured that at Perpignan, which I shouldnot reach till midnight, the affluence of wine-dealers was not less thanat Narbonne. I interviewed every hostess in the town, and got nosatisfaction but distracted shrugs. Finally, at an advanced hour, one ofthe servants of the Hôtel de France, where I had attempted to dine, cameto me in triumph to proclaim that he had secured for me a charmingapartment in a _maison bourgeoise_. I took possession of it gratefully, in spite of its having an entrance like a stable and being pervaded byan odour compared with which that of a stable would have been delicious. As I have mentioned, my landlord was a locksmith, and he had strangemachines which rumbled and whirred in the rooms below my own. Nevertheless I slept, and I dreamed of Carcassonne. It was better to dothat than to dream of the Hôtel de France. I was obliged to cultivaterelations with the cuisine of this establishment. Nothing could havebeen more _méridional_; indeed, both the dirty little inn and Narbonneat large seemed to me to have the infirmities of the south without itsusual graces. Narrow, noisy, shabby, belittered and encumbered, filledwith clatter and chatter, the Hôtel de France would have been describedin perfection by Alphonse Daudet. For what struck me above all in it wasthe note of the Midi as he has represented it--the sound of universaltalk. The landlord sat at supper with sundry friends in a kind of glasscage, with a genial indifference to arriving guests; the waiters tumbledover the loose luggage in the hall; the travellers who had been turnedaway leaned gloomily against door-posts; and the landlady, surrounded byconfusion, unconscious of responsibility, and animated only by thespirit of conversation, bandied high-voiced compliments with the_voyageurs de commerce_. At ten o'clock in the morning there was a tabled'hôte for breakfast--a wonderful repast, which overflowed into everyroom and pervaded the whole establishment. I sat down with a hundredhungry marketers, fat, brown, greasy men, with a good deal of the richsoil of Languedoc adhering to their hands and their boots. I mention thelatter articles because they almost put them on the table. It was veryhot, and there were swarms of flies; the viands had the strongest odour;there was in particular a horrible mixture known as _gras-double_, alight grey, glutinous, nauseating mess, which my companions devoured inlarge quantities. A man opposite to me had the dirtiest fingers I eversaw; a collection of fingers which in England would have excluded himfrom a farmers' ordinary. The conversation was mainly bucolic; though apart of it, I [Illustration: NARBONNE--THE WASHING PLACE] remember, at the table at which I sat, consisted of a discussion as towhether or no the maid-servant were _sage_--a discussion which went onunder the nose of this young lady, as she carried about the dreadful_gras-double_, and to which she contributed the most convincing blushes. It was thoroughly _méridional_. In going to Narbonne I had of course counted upon Roman remains; butwhen I went forth in search of them I perceived that I had hoped toofondly. There is really nothing in the place to speak of; that is, onthe day of my visit there was nothing but the market, which was incomplete possession. "This intricate, curious, but lifeless town, "Murray calls it; yet to me it appeared overflowing with life. Itsstreets are mere crooked, dirty lanes, bordered with perfectlyinsignificant houses; but they were filled with the same clatter andchatter that I had found at the hotel. The market was held partly in thelittle square of the hôtel de ville, a structure which a flatteringwoodcut in the Guide-Joanne had given me a desire to behold. The realitywas not impressive, the old colour of the front having been completelyrestored away. Such interest as it superficially possesses it derivesfrom a fine mediæval tower which rises beside it with turrets at theangles--always a picturesque thing. The rest of the market was held inanother _place_, still shabbier than the first, which lies beyond thecanal. The Canal du Midi flows through the town, and, spanned at thispoint by a small suspension-bridge, presented a certain sketchability. On the farther side were the vendors and chafferers--old women underawnings and big umbrellas, rickety tables piled high with fruit, whitecaps and brown faces, blouses, sabots, donkeys. Beneath this picture wasanother--a long row of washerwomen, on their knees on the edge of thecanal, pounding and wringing the dirty linen of Narbonne--no greatquantity, to judge by the costume of the people. Innumerable rusty men, scattered all over the place, were buying and selling wine, straddlingabout in pairs, in groups, with their hands in their pockets, and packedtogether at the doors of the cafés. They were mostly fat and brown andunshaven; they ground their teeth as they talked; they were very_méridionaux_. The only two lions at Narbonne are the cathedral and the museum, thelatter of which is quartered in the hôtel de ville. The cathedral, closely shut in by houses and with the west front undergoing repairs, issingular in two respects. It consists exclusively of a choir, which isof the end of the thirteenth century and the beginning of the next, andof great magnificence. There is absolutely nothing else. This choir, ofextraordinary elevation, forms the whole church. I sat there a goodwhile; there was no other visitor. I had taken a great dislike to poorlittle Narbonne, which struck me as sordid and overheated, and thisplace seemed to extend to me, as in the Middle Ages, the privilege ofsanctuary. It is a very solemn corner. The other peculiarity of thecathedral is that, externally, it bristles with battlements, havinganciently formed part of the defences of the _archevêché_, which isbeside it and which connects it with the hôtel de ville. Thiscombination of the church and the fortress is very curious, and duringthe Middle Ages was not without its value. The palace of the formerarchbishops of Narbonne (the hôtel de ville of to-day forms part of it)was both an asylum and an arsenal during the hideous wars by which allLanguedoc was ravaged in the thirteenth century. The whole mass ofbuildings [Illustration: NARBONNE--THE CATHEDRAL AND HÔTEL DE VILLE. ] is jammed together in a manner that from certain points of view makes itfar from apparent which feature is which. The museum occupies severalchambers at the top of the hôtel de ville, and is not an imposingcollection. It was closed, but I induced the portress to let me in--asilent, cadaverous person, in a black coif, like a _béguine_, who satknitting in one of the windows while I went the rounds. The number ofRoman fragments is small, and their quality is not the finest; I mustadd that this impression was hastily gathered. There is, indeed, a workof art in one of the rooms which creates a presumption in favour of theplace--the portrait (rather a good one) of a citizen of Narbonne, whosename I forget, who is described as having devoted all his time and hisintelligence to collecting the objects by which the visitor issurrounded. This excellent man was a connoisseur, and the visitor isdoubtless often an ignoramus. [Illustration] Chapter xxv "Cette, with its glistening houses white, Curves with the curving beach away To where the lighthouse beacons bright, Far in the bay. " [Montpellier] That stanza of Matthew Arnold's, which I happened to remember, gave acertain importance to the half-hour I spent in the buffet of the stationat Cette while I waited for the train to Montpellier. I had leftNarbonne in the afternoon, and by the time I reached Cette the darknesshad descended. I therefore missed the sight of the glistening houses, and had to console myself with that of the beacon in the bay, as well aswith a _bouillon_ of which I partook at the buffet aforesaid; for, sincethe morning, I had not ventured to return to the table d'hôte atNarbonne. The Hôtel Nevet at Montpellier, which I reached an hour later, has an ancient renown all over the south of France--advertises itself, Ibelieve, as _le plus vastedu midi_. It seemed to me the model of a goodprovincial inn; a big rambling, creaking establishment, with brown, labyrinthine corridors, a queer old open-air vestibule, into which thediligence, in the _bon temps_, used to penetrate, and an hospitalitymore expressive than that of the new caravansaries. It dates from thedays when Montpellier was still accounted a fine winter residence forpeople with weak lungs; and this rather melancholy tradition, togetherwith the former celebrity of the school of medicine still existingthere, but from which the glory has departed, helps to account for itscombination of high antiquity and vast proportions. The old hotels wereusually more concentrated; but the school of medicine passed for one ofthe attractions of Montpellier. Long before Mentone was discovered orColorado invented, British invalids travelled down through France in thepost-chaise or the public coach, to spend their winters in the wonderfulplace which boasted both a climate and a faculty. The air is mild, nodoubt, but there are refinements of mildness which were not thensuspected, and which in a more analytic age have carried the annual wavefar beyond Montpellier. The place is charming, all the same; and itserved the purpose of John Locke, who made a long stay there, between1675 and 1679, and became acquainted with a noble fellow-visitor, LordPembroke, to whom he dedicated the famous Essay. There are places thatplease without your being able to say wherefore, and Montpellier is oneof the number. It has some charming views, from the great promenade ofthe Peyrou; but its position is not strikingly fine. Beyond this itcontains a good museum and the long façades of its school, but these areits only definite treasures. Its cathedral struck me as quite theweakest I had seen, and I remember no other monument that made up forit. The place has neither the gaiety of a modern nor the solemnity of anancient town, and it is agreeable as certain women are agreeable who areneither beautiful nor clever. An Italian would remark that it issympathetic; a German would admit that it is _gemüthlich_. I spent twodays there, mostly in the rain, and even under these circumstances Icarried away a kindly impression. I think the Hôtel Nevet had somethingto do with it, and the sentiment of relief with which, in a quiet, evena luxurious, room that looked out on a garden, I reflected that I hadwashed my hands of Narbonne. The phylloxera has destroyed the vines inthe country that surrounds Montpellier, and at that moment I was capableof rejoicing in the thought that I should not breakfast with vintners. The gem of the place is the Musée Fabre, one of the best collections ofpaintings in a provincial city. François Fabre, a native of Montpellier, died there in 1837, after having spent a considerable part of his lifein Italy, where he had collected a good many valuable pictures and somevery poor ones, the latter class including several from his own hand. Hewas the hero of a remarkable episode, having succeeded no less a personthan Vittorio Alfieri in the affections of no less a person than Louisede Stolberg, Countess of Albany, widow of no less a person than CharlesEdward Stuart, the second pretender to the British crown. Surely nowoman ever was associated sentimentally with three figures morediverse--a disqualified sovereign, an Italian dramatist, and a badFrench painter. The productions of M. Fabre, who followed in the stepsof David, bear the stamp of a cold mediocrity; there is not much to besaid even for the portrait of the genial countess (her life has beenwritten by M. Saint-Réné-Taillandier, who depicts her as delightful), which hangs in Florence, in the gallery of the Uffizzi, and makes apendant to a likeness of Alfieri by the same author. Stendhal, in his"Mémoires d'un Touriste, " says that this work of art represents her as acook who has pretty hands. I am delighted to having an opportunity ofquoting Stendhal, whose two volumes of the "Mémoires d'un Touriste"every traveller in France should carry in his portmanteau. I have hadthis opportunity more than once, for I have met him at Tours, at Nantes, at Bourges; and everywhere he is suggestive. But he has the defect thathe is never pictorial, that he never by any chance makes an image, andthat his style is perversely colourless for a man so fond ofcontemplation. His taste is often singularly false; it is the taste ofthe early years of the present century, the period that produced clockssurmounted with sentimental "subjects. " Stendhal does not admire theseclocks, but he almost does. He admires Domenichino and Guercino, heprizes the Bolognese school of painters because they "spoke to thesoul. " He is a votary of the new classic, is fond of tall, square, regular buildings, and thinks Nantes, for instance, full of the "airnoble. " It was a pleasure to me to reflect that five-and-forty years agohe had alighted in that city, at the very inn in which I spent a nightand which looks down on the Place Graslin and the theatre. The hotelthat was the best in 1837 appears to be the best to-day. On the subjectof Touraine Stendhal is extremely refreshing; he finds the scenerymeagre and much overrated, and proclaims his opinion with perfectfrankness. He does, however, scant justice to the banks of the Loire;his want of appreciation of the picturesque--want of the sketcher'ssense--causes him to miss half the charm of a landscape which is nothingif not "quiet, " as a painter would say, and of which the felicitiesreveal themselves only to waiting eyes. He even despises the Indre, theriver of Madame Sand. The "Mémoires d'un Touriste" are written in thecharacter of a commercial traveller, and the author has nothing to sayabout Chenonceaux or Chambord, or indeed about any of the châteaux ofthat part of France; his system being to talk only of the large towns, where he may be supposed to find a market for his goods. It was hisambition to pass for an ironmonger. But in the large towns he is usuallyexcellent company, though as discursive as Sterne and strangelyindifferent, for a man of imagination, to those superficial aspects ofthings which the poor pages now before the reader are mainly an attemptto render. It is his conviction that Alfieri, at Florence, bored theCountess of Albany terribly; and he adds that the famous Gallophobe diedof jealousy of the little painter from Montpellier. The Countess ofAlbany left her property to Fabre; and I suppose some of the pieces inthe museum of his native town used to hang in the sunny saloons of thatfine old palace on the Arno which is still pointed out to the strangerin Florence as the residence of Alfieri. The institution has had other benefactors, notably a certain M. Bruyas, who has enriched it with an extraordinary number of portraits ofhimself. As these, however, are by different hands, some of themdistinguished, we may suppose that it was less the model than theartists to whom M. Bruyas wished to give publicity. Easily first are twolarge specimens of David Teniers, which are incomparable for brilliancyand a glowing perfection of execution. I have a weakness for thissingular genius, who combined the delicate with the grovelling, and Ihave rarely seen richer examples. Scarcely less valuable is a Gerard Dowwhich hangs near them, though it must rank lower, as having kept less ofits freshness. This Gerard Dow did me good, for a master is a master, whatever he may paint. It represents a woman paring carrots, while a boybefore her exhibits a mouse-trap in which he has caught a frightenedvictim. The goodwife has spread a cloth on the top of a big barrel whichserves her as a table, and on this brown, greasy napkin, of which thetexture is wonderfully rendered, lie the raw vegetables she is preparingfor domestic consumption. Beside the barrel is a large caldron linedwith copper, with a rim of brass. The way these things are paintedbrings tears to the eyes; but they give the measure, of the Musée Fabre, where two specimens of Teniers and a Gerard Dow are the jewels. TheItalian pictures are of small value; but there is a work by Sir JoshuaReynolds, said to be the only one in France--an infant Samuel in prayer, apparently a repetition of the picture in England which inspired thelittle plaster image, disseminated in Protestant lands, that we used toadmire in our childhood. Sir Joshua, somehow, was an eminentlyProtestant painter; no one can forget that, who in the National Galleryin London has looked at the picture in which he represents several youngladies as nymphs, voluminously draped, hanging garlands over a statue--apicture suffused indefinably with the Anglican spirit and exasperatingto a member of one of the Latin races. It is an odd chance thereforethat has led him into that part of France where Protestants have beenleast _bien vus_. This is the country of the dragonnades of Louis XIV. And of the pastors of the desert. From the garden of the Peyrou, atMontpellier, you may see the hills of the Cévennes, to which they of thereligion fled for safety and out of which they were hunted and harried. I have only to add, in regard to the Musée Fabre, that it contains theportrait of its founder--a little, pursy, fat-faced, elderly man, whosecountenance contains few indications of the power that makesdistinguished victims. He is, however, just such a personage as themind's eye sees walking on the terrace of the Peyrou of an Octoberafternoon in the early years of the century; a plump figure in achocolate-coloured coat and a _culotte_ that exhibits a good leg--aculotte provided with a watch-fob from which a heavy seal is suspended. This Peyrou (to come to it at last) is a wonderful place, especially tobe found in a little provincial city. France is certainly the country oftowns that aim at completeness; more than in other lands they containstately features as a matter of course. We should never have ceased tohear about the Peyrou if fortune had placed it at a Shrewsbury or aBuffalo. It is true that the place enjoys a certain celebrity at home, which it amply deserves, moreover; for nothing could be more impressiveand monumental. It consists of an "elevated platform, " as Murraysays--an immense terrace laid out, in the highest part of the town, as agarden, and commanding in all directions a view which in clear weathermust be of the finest. I strolled there in the intervals of showers, andsaw only the nearer beauties--a great pompous arch of triumph in honourof Louis XIV. (which is not, properly speaking, in the garden, but facesit, straddling across the _place_ by which you approach it from thetown), an equestrian statue of that monarch set aloft in the middle ofthe terrace, and a very exalted and complicated fountain, which forms abackground to the picture. This fountain gushes from a kind of hydraulictemple, or _château d'eau_, to which you ascend by broad flights ofsteps, and which is fed by a splendid aqueduct, stretched in the mostornamental and unexpected manner across the neighbouring valley. Allthis work dates from the middle of the last century. The combination offeatures--the triumphal arch, or gate; the wide fair terrace, with itsbeautiful view; the statue of the grand monarch; the big architecturalfountain, which would not surprise one at Rome, but does surprise one atMontpellier; and to complete the effect, the extraordinary aqueduct, charmingly fore-shortened--all this is worthy of a capital, of a littlecourt-city. The whole place, with its repeated steps, its balustrades, its massive and plentiful stonework, is full of the air of the lastcentury--_sent bien son dix-huitième siècle_; none the less so, I amafraid, that, as I read in my faithful Murray, after the revocation ofthe Edict of Nantes the block, the stake, the wheel had been erectedhere for the benefit of the desperate Camisards. [Illustration] Chapter xxvi [The Pont du Gard] It was a pleasure to feel one's self in Provence again--the land wherethe silver-grey earth is impregnated with the light of the sky. Tocelebrate the event, as soon as I arrived at Nîmes I engaged a calècheto convey me to the Pont du Gard. The day was yet young and wasexceptionally fair; it appeared well, for a longish drive, to takeadvantage, without delay, of such security. After I had left the town Ibecame more intimate with that Provençal charm which I had alreadyenjoyed from the window of the train, and which glowed in the sweetsunshine and the white rocks and lurked in the smoke puffs of the littleolives. The olive-trees in Provence are half the landscape. They areneither so tall, so stout, nor so richly contorted as you have seen thembeyond the Alps; but this mild colourless bloom seems the very textureof the country. The road from Nîmes, for a distance of fifteen miles, issuperb; broad enough for an army and as white and firm as adinner-table. It stretches away over undulations which have a kind ofrhythmic value, and in the curves it makes through the wide, freecountry, where there is never a hedge or a wall and the detail is alwaysexquisite, there is something majestic, almost processional. Some twentyminutes before I reached the little inn that marks the termination ofthe drive my vehicle met with an accident which just missed beingserious, and which engaged the attention of a gentleman who, followed byhis groom and mounted on a strikingly handsome horse, happened to rideup at the moment. This young man, who, with his good looks and charmingmanner, might have stepped out of a novel of Octave Feuillet, gave mesome very intelligent advice in reference to one of my horses that hadbeen injured, and was so good as to accompany me to the inn, with theresources of which he was acquainted, to see that his recommendationswere carried out. The result of our interview was that he invited me tocome and look at a small but ancient château in the neighbourhood, whichhe had the happiness--not the greatest in the world, he intimated--toinhabit, and at which I engaged to present myself after I should havespent an hour at the Pont du Gard. For the moment, when we separated, Igave all my attention to that great structure. You are very near itbefore you see it; the ravine it spans suddenly opens and exhibits thepicture. The scene at this point grows extremely beautiful. The ravineis the valley of the Garden, which the road from Nîmes has followed sometime without taking account of it, but which, exactly at the rightdistance from the aqueduct, deepens and expands and puts on thosecharacteristics which are best suited to give it effect. The gorge becomes romantic, still and solitary, and, with its whiterocks and wild shrubbery, hangs over the clear-coloured river, in whoseslow course there is, here and there, a deeper pool. Over the valley, from side to side and ever so high in the air, stretch the three tiersof the tremendous bridge. They are unspeakably imposing, and nothingcould well be more Roman. The hugeness, the solidity, theunexpectedness, the monumental rectitude of the whole thing leave younothing to say--at the time--and make you stand gazing. You simply feelthat it is noble and perfect, that it has the quality of greatness. Aroad, branching from the highway, descends to the level of the river andpasses under one of the arches. This road has a wide margin of grass andloose stones, which slopes upward into the bank of the ravine. You maysit here as long as you please, staring up at the light, strong piers;the spot is sufficiently "wild, " though two or three stone benches havebeen erected on it. I remained there an hour and got a completeimpression; the place was perfectly soundless and, for the time atleast, lonely; the splendid afternoon had begun to fade, and there was afascination in the object I had come to see. It came to pass that at thesame time I discovered in it a certain stupidity, a vague brutality. That element is rarely absent from great Roman work, which is wanting inthe nice adaptation of the means to the end. The means are alwaysexaggerated; the end is so much more than attained. The Roman rigour wasapt to overshoot the mark, and I suppose a race which could do nothingsmall is as defective as a race that can do nothing great. Of this Romanrigour the Pont du Gard is an admirable example. It would be a greatinjustice, however, not to insist upon its [Illustration: THE PONT DU GARD. ] beauty--a kind of manly beauty, that of an object constructed not toplease but to serve, and impressive simply from the scale on which itcarries out this intention. The number of arches in each tier isdifferent; they are smaller and more numerous as they ascend. Thepreservation of the thing is extraordinary; nothing has crumbled orcollapsed; every feature remains, and the huge blocks of stone, of abrownish-yellow (as if they had been baked by the Provençal sun foreighteen centuries), pile themselves, without mortar or cement, asevenly as the day they were laid together. All this to carry the waterof a couple of springs to a little provincial city! The conduit on thetop has retained its shape and traces of the cement with which it waslined. When the vague twilight began to gather, the lonely valley seemedto fill itself with the shadow of the Roman name, as if the mightyempire were still as erect as the supports of the aqueduct; and it wasopen to a solitary tourist, sitting there sentimental, to believe thatno people has ever been, or will ever be, as great as that, measured, aswe measure the greatness of an individual, by the push they gave to whatthey undertook. The Pont du Gard is one of the three or four deepestimpressions they have left; it speaks of them in a manner with whichthey might have been satisfied. I feel as if it were scarcely discreet to indicate the whereabouts ofthe château of the obliging young man I had met on the way from Nîmes; Imust content myself with saying that it nestled in an enchantingvalley--_dans le fond_, as they say in France--and that I took my coursethither on foot after leaving the Pont du Gard. I find it noted in myjournal as "an adorable little corner. " The principal feature of theplace is a couple of very ancient towers, brownish-yellow in hue, andmantled in scarlet Virginia-creeper. One of these towers, reputed to beof Saracenic origin, is isolated, and is only the more effective; theother is incorporated in the house, which is delightfully fragmentaryand irregular. It had got to be late by this time, and the lonely_castel_ looked crepuscular and mysterious. An old housekeeper was sentfor, who showed me the rambling interior; and then the young man took meinto a dim old drawing-room, which had no less than four chimney-pieces, all unlighted, and gave me a refection of fruit and sweet wine. When Ipraised the wine and asked him what it was, he said simply "C'est du vinde ma mère!" Throughout my little journey I had never yet felt myself sofar from Paris; and this was a sensation I enjoyed more than my host, who was an involuntary exile, consoling himself with laying out a_manège_ which he showed me as I walked away. His civility was great, and I was greatly touched by it. On my way back to the little inn whereI had left my vehicle I passed the Pont du Gard and took another look atit. Its great arches made windows for the evening sky, and the rockyravine, with its dusky cedars and shining river, was lonelier thanbefore. At the inn I swallowed, or tried to swallow, a glass of horriblewine with my coachman; after which, with my reconstructed team, I droveback to Nîmes in the moonlight. It only added a more solitary whitenessto the constant sheen of the Provençal landscape. [Illustration] Chapter xxvii [Aigues-Mortes] The weather the next day was equally fair, so that it seemed animprudence not to make sure of Aigues-Mortes. Nîmes itself could wait;at a pinch I could attend to Nîmes in the rain. It was my belief thatAigues-Mortes was a little gem, and it is natural to desire that gemsshould have an opportunity to sparkle. This is an excursion of but a fewhours, and there is a little friendly, familiar, dawdling train thatwill convey you, in time for a noonday breakfast, to the small dead townwhere the blessed Saint Louis twice embarked for the Crusades. You mayget back to Nîmes for dinner; the run--or rather the walk, for the traindoesn't run--is of about an hour. I found the little journey charmingand looked out of the carriage window, on my right, at the distantCévennes, covered with tones of amber and blue, and, all around, atvineyards red with the touch of October. The grapes were gone, but theplants had a colour of their own. Within a certain distance of Aigues-Mortes they give place to widesalt-marshes, traversed by two canals; and over this expanse the trainrumbles slowly upon a narrow causeway, failing for some time, though youknow you are near the object of your curiosity, to bring you to sight ofanything but the horizon. Suddenly it appears, the towered and embattledmass, lying so low that the crest of its defences seems to rise straightout of the ground; and it is not till the train stops close before themthat you are able to take the full measure of its walls. Aigues-Mortes stands on the edge of a wide _étang_, or shallow inlet ofthe sea, the farther side of which is divided by a narrow band of coastfrom the Gulf of Lyons. Next after Carcassonne, to which it forms anadmirable _pendant_, it is the most perfect thing of the kind in France. It has a rival in the person of Avignon, but the ramparts of Avignon aremuch less effective. Like Carcassonne, it is completely surrounded withits old fortifications; and if they are far simpler in character (thereis but one circle), they are quite as well preserved. The moat has beenfilled up, and the site of the town might be figured by a billiard-tablewithout pockets. On this absolute level, covered with coarse grass, Aigues-Mortes presents quite the appearance of the walled town that aschool-boy draws upon his slate or that we see in the background ofearly Flemish pictures--a simple parallelogram, of a contour almostabsurdly bare, broken at intervals by angular towers and square holes. Such, literally speaking, is this delightful little city, which needs tobe seen to tell its full story. It is extraordinarily pictorial, and ifit is a very small sister of Carcassonne, it has at least the essentialfeatures of the family. Indeed, it is even more like an image and lesslike a reality than Carcassonne; for by position and prospect it seemseven more detached from the life of the present day. It is true thatAigues-Mortes does a little business; it sees certain bags of salt piledinto barges which stand in a canal beside it, and which carry theircargo into actual places. But nothing could well be more drowsy anddesultory than this industry as I saw it practised, with the aid of twoor three brown peasants and under the eye of a solitary douanier, whostrolled on the little quay beneath the western wall. "C'est bienplaisant, c'est bien paisible, " said this worthy man, with whom I hadsome conversation; and pleasant and peaceful is the place indeed, thoughthe former of these epithets may suggest an element of gaiety in whichAigues-Mortes is deficient. The sand, the salt, the dull sea-view, surround it with a bright, quiet melancholy. There are fifteen towersand nine gates, five of which are on the southern side, overlooking thewater. I walked all round the place three times (it doesn't take long), but lingered most under the southern wall, where the afternoon lightslept in the dreamiest, sweetest way. I sat down on an old stone andlooked away to the desolate salt-marshes and the still, shining surfaceof the _étang_; and, as I did so, reflected that this was a queer littleout-of-the-world corner to have been chosen, in the great dominions ofeither monarch, for that pompous interview which took place, in 1538, between Francis I. And Charles V. It was also not easy to perceive howLouis IX. , when in 1248 and 1270 he started for the Holy Land, set hisarmy afloat in such very undeveloped channels. An hour later I purchasedin the town a little pamphlet by M. Marius Topin, who undertakes toexplain this latter anomaly and to show that there is water enough inthe port, as we may call it by courtesy, to have sustained a fleet ofcrusaders. I was unable to trace the channel that he points out, but wasglad to believe that, as he contends, the sea has not retreated from thetown since the thirteenth century. It was comfortable to think thatthings are not so changed as that. M. Topin indicates that the otherFrench ports of the Mediterranean were not then _disponibles_, and thatAigues-Mortes was the most eligible spot for an embarkation. Behind the straight walls and the quiet gates the little town has notcrumbled like the Cité of Carcassonne. It can hardly be said to bealive; but if it is dead it has been very neatly embalmed. The hand ofthe restorer rests on it constantly; but this artist has not, as atCarcassonne, had miracles to accomplish. The interior is very still andempty, with small stony, whitewashed streets tenanted by a stray dog, astray cat, a stray old woman. In the middle is a little _place_, withtwo or three cafés decorated by wide awnings--a little _place_ of whichthe principal feature is a very bad bronze statue of Saint Louis byPradier. It is almost as bad as the breakfast I had at the inn thatbears the name of that pious monarch. You may walk round the enceinte ofAigues-Mortes both outside and in; but you may not, as at Carcassonne, make a portion of this circuit on the _chemin de ronde_, the littleprojecting footway attached to the inner face of the battlements. Thisfootway, wide enough only for a single pedestrian, is in the best order, and near each of the gates a flight of steps leads up to it; but alocked gate at the top of the steps makes access impossible, or at leastunlawful. Aigues-Mortes, however, has its citadel, an immense tower, larger than any of the others, a little detached [Illustration: AIGUES-MORTES] and standing at the north-west angle of the town. I called upon the_casernier_--the custodian of the walls--and in his absence I wasconducted through this big Tour de Constance by his wife, a very mild, meek woman, yellow with the traces of fever and ague--a scourge which, as might be expected in a town whose name denotes "dead waters, " entersfreely at the nine gates. The Tour de Constance is of extraordinarygirth and solidity, divided into three superposed circular chambers, with very fine vaults, which are lighted by embrasures of prodigiousdepth, converging to windows little larger than loopholes. The placeserved for years as a prison to many of the Protestants of the southwhom the revocation of the Edict of Nantes had exposed to atrociouspenalties, and the annals of these dreadful chambers in the first halfof the last century were written in tears and blood. Some of therecorded cases of long confinement there make one marvel afresh at whatman has inflicted and endured. In a country in which a policy ofextermination was to be put into practice this horrible tower was anobvious resource. From the battlements at the top, which is surmountedby an old disused lighthouse, you see the little compact rectangulartown, which looks hardly bigger than a garden-patch, mapped out beneathyou, and follow the plain configuration of its defences. You takepossession of it, and you feel that you will remember it always. [Illustration] Chapter xxviii [Nîmes] After this I was free to look about me at Nîmes, and I did so with suchattention as the place appeared to require. At the risk of seeming tooeasily and too frequently disappointed, I will say that it requiredrather less than I had been prepared to give. It is a town of three orfour fine features rather than a town with, as I may say, a generalfigure. In general Nîmes is poor; its only treasures are its Romanremains, which are of the first order. The new French fashions prevailin many of its streets; the old houses are paltry, and the good housesare new; while beside my hotel rose a big spick-and-span church, whichhad the oddest air of having been intended for Brooklyn or Cleveland. Itis true that this church looked out on a square completely French--asquare of a fine modern disposition, flanked on one side by a classical_palais de justice_ embellished with trees and parapets and occupied inthe centre with a group of allegorical statues such as one encountersonly in the cities of France, the chief of these being a colossal figureby Pradier representing Nîmes. An English, an American town which shouldhave such a monument, such a square as this would be a place of greatpretensions; but, like so many little _villes de province_ in thecountry of which I write, Nîmes is easily ornamental. What noblerelement can there be than the Roman baths at the foot of Mont Cavalierand the delightful old garden that surrounds them? All that quarter ofNîmes has every reason to be proud of itself; it has been revealed tothe world at large by copious photography. A clear, abundant streamgushes from the foot of a high hill (covered with trees and laid out inpaths), and is distributed into basins which sufficiently referthemselves to the period that gave them birth--the period that has leftits stamp on that pompous Peyrou which we admired at Montpellier. Hereare the same terraces and steps and balustrades, and a system ofwaterworks less impressive perhaps, but very ingenious and charming. Thewhole place is a mixture of old Rome and of the French eighteenthcentury; for the remains of the antique baths are in a measureincorporated in the modern fountains. In a corner of this umbrageousprecinct stands a small Roman ruin, which is known as a temple of Diana, but was more apparently a _nymphæum_, and appears to have had a gracefulconnection with the adjacent baths. I learn from Murray that this littletemple, of the period of Augustus, "was reduced to its present state ofruin in 1577;" the moment at which the townspeople, threatened with asiege by the troops of the Crown, partly demolished it lest it shouldserve as a cover to the enemy. The remains are very fragmentary, butthey serve to show that the place was lovely. I spent half an hour init on a perfect Sunday morning (it is enclosed by a high _grille_, carefully tended, and has a warden of its own), and with the help of myimagination tried to reconstruct a little the aspect of things in theGallo-Roman days. I do wrong perhaps to say that I _tried_; from aflight so deliberate I should have shrunk. But there was a certaincontagion of antiquity in the air; and among the ruins of baths andtemples, in the very spot where the aqueduct that crosses the Gardon inthe wondrous manner I had seen discharged itself, the picture of asplendid paganism seemed vaguely to glow. Roman baths--Roman baths;those words alone were a scene. Everything was changed: I was strollingin a _jardin français_; the bosky slope of the Mont Cavalier (a verymodest mountain), hanging over the place, is crowned with a shapelesstower, which is as likely to be of mediæval as of antique origin; andyet, as I leaned on the parapet of one of the fountains, where a flightof curved steps (a hemicycle, as the French say) descended into a basinfull of dark, cool recesses, where the slabs of the Roman foundationsgleam through the clear green water--as in this attitude I surrenderedmyself to contemplation and reverie, it seemed to me that I touched fora moment the ancient world. Such moments are illuminating, and the lightof this one mingles, in my memory, with the dusky greenness of theJardin de la Fontaine. The fountain proper--the source of all these distributed waters--is theprettiest thing in the world, a reduced copy of Vaucluse. It gushes upat the foot of the Mont Cavalier, at a point where that eminence riseswith a certain cliff-like effect, and, like other springs in the samecircumstances, appears to issue [Illustration: NÎMES--THE CATHEDRAL] from the rock with a sort of quivering stillness. I trudged up the MontCavalier--it is a matter of five minutes--and having committed thiscockneyism, enhanced it presently by another. I ascended the stupid TourMagne, the mysterious structure I mentioned a moment ago. The onlyfeature of this dateless tube, except the inevitable collection ofphotographs to which you are introduced by the doorkeeper, is the viewyou enjoy from its summit. This view is of course remarkably fine, but Iam ashamed to say I have not the smallest recollection of it; for whileI looked into the brilliant spaces of the air I seemed still to see onlywhat I saw in the depths of the Roman baths--the image, disastrouslyconfused and vague, of a vanished world. This world, however, has leftat Nîmes a far more considerable memento than a few old stones coveredwith water-moss. The Roman arena is the rival of those of Verona and ofArles; at a respectful distance it emulates the Colosseum. It is a smallColosseum, if I may be allowed the expression, and is in much betterpreservation than the great circus at Rome. This is especially true ofthe external walls, with their arches, pillars, cornices. I must addthat one should not speak of preservation, in regard to the arena atNîmes, without speaking also of repair. After the great ruin ceased tobe despoiled it began to be protected, and most of its wounds have beendressed with new material. These matters concern the archæologist; and Ifelt here, as I felt afterwards at Arles, that one of the profane, inthe presence of such a monument, can only admire and hold his tongue. The great impression, on the whole, is an impression of wonder that somuch should have survived. What remains at Nîmes, after all dilapidationis estimated, is astounding. I spent an hour in the Arènes on that samesweet Sunday morning, as I came back from the Roman baths, and saw thatthe corridors, the vaults, the staircases, the external casing, arestill virtually there. Many of these parts are wanting in the Colosseum, whose sublimity of size, however, can afford to dispense with detail. The seats at Nîmes, like those at Verona, have been largely renewed; notthat this mattered much, as I lounged on the cool surface of one of themand admired the mighty concavity of the place and the ellipticalsky-line, broken by uneven blocks and forming the rim of the monstrouscup--a cup that had been filled with horrors. And yet I made myreflections: I said to myself that though a Roman arena is one of themost impressive of the works of man, it has a touch of that samestupidity which I ventured to discover in the Pont du Gard. It isbrutal; it is monotonous; it is not at all exquisite. The Arènes atNîmes were arranged for a bull-fight--a form of recreation that, as Iwas informed, is much _dans les habitudes Nîmoises_, and very commonthroughout Provence, where (still according to my information) it is theusual pastime of a Sunday afternoon. At Arles and Nîmes it has acharacteristic setting, but in the villages the patrons of the game makea circle of carts and barrels, on which the spectators perch themselves. I was surprised at the prevalence in mild Provence of the Iberian vice, and hardly know whether it makes the custom more respectable that atNîmes and Arles the thing is shabbily and imperfectly done. The bullsare rarely killed, and indeed often are bulls only in the Irish sense ofthe term--being domestic and motherly cows. Such an entertainment ofcourse does not supply to the arena that element of the exquisite whichI [Illustration: NÎMES--THE AMPHITHEATRE] spoke of as wanting. The exquisite at Nîmes is mainly represented by thefamous Maison Carrée. The first impression you receive from thisdelicate little building, as you stand before it, is that you havealready seen it many times. Photographs, engravings, models, medals, have placed it definitely in your eye, so that from the sentiment withwhich you regard it curiosity and surprise are almost completely, andperhaps deplorably, absent. Admiration remains, however--admiration of afamiliar and even slightly patronising kind. The Maison Carrée does notoverwhelm you; you can conceive it. It is not one of the greatsensations of antique art; but it is perfectly felicitous, and, in spiteof having been put to all sorts of incongruous uses, marvellouslypreserved. Its slender columns, its delicate proportions, its charmingcompactness, seem to bring one nearer to the century that built it thanthe great superpositions of arenas and bridges, and give it the interestthat vibrates from one age to another when the note of taste is struck. If anything were needed to make this little toy-temple a happyproduction, the service would be rendered by the second-rate boulevardthat conducts to it, adorned with inferior cafés and tobacco-shops. Here, in a respectable recess, surrounded by vulgar habitations and withthe theatre, of a classic pretension, opposite, stands the small "squarehouse, " so called because it is much longer than it is broad. I saw itfirst in the evening, in the vague moonlight, which made it look as ifit were cast in bronze. Stendhal says, justly, that it has the shape ofa playing-card, and he expresses his admiration for it by the singularwish that an "exact copy" of it should be erected in Paris. He even goesso far as to say that in the year 1880 this tribute will have beenrendered to its charms; nothing would be more simple, to his mind, thanto "have" in that city "le Panthéon de Rome, quelques temples de Grèce. "Stendhal found it amusing to write in the character of a_commis-voyageur_, and sometimes it occurs to his reader that he reallywas one. [Illustration] Chapter xxix [Tarascon] On my way from Nîmes to Arles I spent three hours at Tarascon; chieflyfor the love of Alphonse Daudet, who has written nothing more genialthan "Les Aventures Prodigieuses de Tartarin, " and the story of the"siege" of the bright, dead little town (a mythic siege by thePrussians) in the "Contes du Lundi. " In the introduction which, for thenew edition of his works, he has lately supplied to "Tartarin, " theauthor of this extravagant but kindly satire gives some account of thedispleasure with which he has been visited by the ticklish Tarasconnais. Daudet relates that in his attempt to shed a humorous light upon some ofthe more vivid phases of the Provençal character he selected Tarascon ata venture; not because the temperament of its natives is morevainglorious than that of their neighbours, or their rebellion againstthe "despotism of fact" more marked, but simply because he had to name aparticular Provençal city. Tartarin is a hunter of lions and charmer ofwomen, a true "_produit du midi_, " as Daudet says, a character of themost extravagant, genial comedy. He is a minimised Don Quixote, withmuch less dignity but with equal good faith; and the story of hisexploits is a little masterpiece of the free fantastic. TheTarasconnais, however, declined to take the joke, and opened the vialsof their wrath upon the mocking child of Nîmes, who would have beenbetter employed, they doubtless thought, in showing up the infirmitiesof his own family. I am bound to add that when I passed through Tarasconthey did not appear to be in the least out of humour. Nothing could havebeen brighter, easier, more suggestive of amiable indifference, than thepicture it presented to my mind. It lies quietly beside the Rhone, looking across at Beaucaire, which seems very distant and independent, and tacitly consenting to let the castle of the good King René of Anjou, which projects very boldly into the river, pass for its most interestingfeature. The other features are, primarily, a sort of vivid sleepinessin the aspect of the place, as if the September noon (it had lingered oninto October) lasted longer there than elsewhere; certain low arcadeswhich make the streets look grey and exhibit empty vistas; and a verycurious and beautiful walk beside the Rhone, denominated the Chaussée--along and narrow causeway, densely shaded by two rows of magnificent oldtrees planted in its embankment and rendered doubly effective at themoment I passed over it by a little train of collegians who had beentaken out for mild exercise by a pair of young priests. Lastly one maysay that a striking element of Tarascon, as of any town that lies on theRhone, is simply the Rhone itself; the big brown flood, of uncertaintemper, which has never taken time to forget that it is a child of themountain and the glacier, and that such an origin carries with it greatprivileges. Later, at Avignon, I observed it in the exercise of theseprivileges, chief among which was that of frightening the good people ofthe old papal city half out of their wits. The château of King René serves to-day as the prison of a district, andthe traveller who wishes to look into it must obtain his permission atthe Mairie of Tarascon. If he have had a certain experience of Frenchmanners, his application will be accompanied with the forms of aconsiderable obsequiosity, and in this case his request will be grantedas civilly as it has been made. The castle has more of the air of aseverely feudal fortress than I should suppose the period of itsconstruction (the first half of the fifteenth century) would havewarranted; being tremendously bare and perpendicular, and constructedfor comfort only in the sense that it was arranged for defence. It is asquare and simple mass, composed of small yellow stones and perched on apedestal of rock which easily commands the river. The building has theusual circular towers at the corners and a heavy cornice at the top, andimmense stretches of sun-scorched wall relieved at wide intervals bysmall windows, heavily cross-barred. It has, above all, an extremesteepness of aspect; I cannot express it otherwise. The walls are assheer and inhospitable as precipices. The castle has kept its largemoat, which is now a hollow filled with wild plants. To this tallfortress the good René retired in the middle of the fifteenth century, finding it apparently the most substantial thing left him in a dominionwhich had included Naples and Sicily, Lorraine and Anjou. He had been amuch-tried monarch and the sport of a various fortune, fighting halfhis life for thrones he didn't care for, and exalted only to be quicklycast down. Provence was the country of his affection, and the memory ofhis troubles did not prevent him from holding a joyous court at Tarasconand at Aix. He finished the castle at Tarascon, which had been begunearlier in the century--finished it, I suppose, for consistency's sake, in the manner in which it had originally been designed rather than inaccordance with the artistic tastes that formed the consolation of hisold age. He was a painter, a writer, a dramatist, a modern dilettante, addicted to private theatricals. There is something very attractive inthe image that he has imprinted on the page of history. He was bothclever and kind, and many reverses and much suffering had not embitteredhim nor quenched his faculty of enjoyment. He was fond of his sweetProvence, and his sweet Provence has been grateful; it has woven a lighttissue of legend around the memory of the good King René. I strolled over his dusky habitation--it must have taken all his goodhumour to light it up--at the heels of the custodian, who showed me theusual number of castle-properties: a deep, well-like court; a collectionof winding staircases and vaulted chambers, the embrasures of whosewindows and the recesses of whose doorways reveal a tremendous thicknessof wall. These things constitute the general identity of old castles;and when one has wandered through a good many, with due discretion ofstep and protrusion of head, one ceases very much to distinguish andremember, and contents one's self with consigning them to the honourablelimbo of the romantic. I must add that this reflection did not in theleast deter me from crossing the bridge which connects Tarascon withBeaucaire, in [Illustration: TARASCON--THE CASTLE] order to examine the old fortress whose ruins adorn the latter city. Itstands on a foundation of rock much higher than that of Tarascon, andlooks over with a melancholy expression at its better-conditionedbrother. Its position is magnificent and its outline very gallant. I waswell rewarded for my pilgrimage; for if the castle of Beaucaire is onlya fragment, the whole place, with its position and its views, is anineffaceable picture. It was the stronghold of the Montmorencys, and itslast tenant was that rash Duke François whom Richelieu, seizing everyoccasion to trample on a great noble, caused to be beheaded at Toulouse, where we saw, in the Capitol, the butcher's knife with which thecardinal pruned the crown of France of its thorns. The castle, after thedeath of this victim, was virtually demolished. Its site, which natureto-day has taken again to herself, has an extraordinary charm. The massof rock that it formerly covered rises high above the town and is asprecipitous as the side of the Rhone. A tall, rusty iron gate admits youfrom a quiet corner of Beaucaire to a wild tangled garden covering theside of the hill--for the whole place forms the public promenade of thetownsfolk--a garden without flowers, with little steep, rough paths thatwind under a plantation of small, scrubby stone-pines. Above this is thegrassy platform of the castle, enclosed on one side only (toward theriver) by a large fragment of wall and a very massive dungeon. There arebenches placed in the lee of the wall, and others on the edge of theplatform, where one may enjoy a view, beyond the river, of certainpeeled and scorched undulations. A sweet desolation, an everlastingpeace, seemed to hang in the air. A very old man (a fragment, like thecastle itself) emerged from some crumbling corner to do me thehonours--a very gentle, obsequious, tottering, toothless, grateful oldman. He beguiled me into an ascent of the solitary tower, from which youmay look down on the big sallow river and glance at diminished Tarasconand the barefaced, bald-headed hills behind it. It may appear that Iinsist too much upon the nudity of the Provençal horizon--too muchconsidering that I have spoken of the prospect from the heights ofBeaucaire as lovely. But it is an exquisite bareness; it seems to existfor the purpose of allowing one to follow the delicate lines of thehills and touch with the eyes, as it were, the smallest inflections ofthe landscape. It makes the whole thing wonderfully bright and pure. Beaucaire used to be the scene of a famous fair, the great fair of thesouth of France. It has gone the way of most fairs, even in France, where these delightful exhibitions hold their own much better than mightbe supposed. It is still held in the month of July; but the bourgeoisesof Tarascon send to the Magasin du Louvre for their smart dresses, andthe principal glory of the scene is its long tradition. Even now, however, it ought to be the prettiest of all fairs, for it takes placein, a charming wood which lies just beneath the castle, beside theRhone. The booths, the barracks, the platforms of the mountebanks, thebright-coloured crowd, diffused through this midsummer shade and spottedhere and there with the rich Provençal sunshine, must be of the mostpictorial effect. It is highly probable too that it offers a largecollection of pretty faces; for even in the few hours that I spent atTarascon I discovered symptoms of the purity of feature for which thewomen of the _pays d'Arles_ are renowned. The Arlesian head-dress wasvisible in the streets; and this delightful coiffure is so associatedwith a charming facial oval, a dark mild eye, a straight Greek nose, and a mouth worthy of all the rest, that it conveys a presumption ofbeauty which gives the wearer time either to escape or to please you. Ihave read somewhere, however, that Tarascon is supposed to producehandsome men, as Arles is known to deal in handsome women. It may bethat I should have found the Tarasconnais very fine fellows if I hadencountered enough specimens to justify an induction. But there are veryfew males in the streets, and the place presented no appearance ofactivity. Here and there the black coif of an old woman or of a younggirl was framed by a low doorway; but for the rest, as I have said, Tarascon was mostly involved in a siesta. There was not a creature inthe little church of Saint Martha, which I made a point of visitingbefore I returned to the station, and which, with its fine romanesqueside-portal and its pointed and crocketed gothic spire, is as curious asit need be in view of its tradition. It stands in a quiet corner wherethe grass grows between the small cobble-stones, and you pass beneath adeep archway to reach it. The tradition relates that Saint Martha tamedwith her own hands and attached to her girdle a dreadful dragon who wasknown as the Tarasque and is reported to have given his name to the cityon whose site (amid the rocks which form the base of the château) he hadhis cavern. The dragon perhaps is the symbol of a ravening paganismdispelled by the eloquence of a sweet evangelist. The bones of theinteresting saint, at all events, were found, in the eleventh century, in a cave beneath the spot on which her altar now stands. I know notwhat had become of the bones of the dragon. [Illustration] Chapter xxx [Arles] There are two shabby old inns at Arles which compete closely for yourcustom. I mean by this that if you elect to go to the Hôtel du Forum, the Hôtel du Nord, which is placed exactly beside it (at a right angle), watches your arrival with ill-concealed disapproval; and if you take thechances of its neighbour, the Hôtel du Forum seems to glare at youinvidiously from all its windows and doors. I forget which of theseestablishments I selected; whichever it was, I wished very much that ithad been the other. The two stand together on the Place des Hommes, alittle public square of Arles which somehow quite misses its effect. Asa city, indeed, Arles quite misses its effect in every way; and if it isa charming place, as I think it is, I can hardly tell the reason why. The straight-nosed Arlésiennes account for it in some degree; and theremainder may be charged to the ruins of the arena and the theatre. Beyond this, I remember with affection the ill-proportioned little Placedes Hommes; not at all monumental, and given over to puddles and toshabby cafés. I recall with tenderness the tortuous and featurelessstreets, which looked liked the streets of a village and were paved withvillainous little sharp stones, making all exercise penitential. Consecrated by association is even a tiresome walk that I took theevening I arrived, with the purpose of obtaining a view of the Rhone. Ihad been to Arles before, years ago, and it seemed to me that Iremembered finding on the banks of the stream some sort of picture. Ithink that on the evening on which I speak there was a watery moon, which it seemed to me would light up the past as well as the present. But I found no picture, and I scarcely found the Rhone at all. I lost myway, and there was not a creature in the streets to whom I could appeal. Nothing could be more provincial than the situation of Arles at teno'clock at night. At last I arrived at a kind of embankment where Icould see the great mud-coloured stream slipping along in the soundlessdarkness. It had come on to rain, I know not what had happened to themoon, and the whole place was anything but gay. It was not what I hadlooked for; what I had looked for was in the irrecoverable past. Igroped my way back to the inn over the infernal _cailloux_, feeling likea discomfited Dogberry. I remember now that this hotel was the one(whichever that may be) which has the fragment of a Gallo-Roman porticoinserted into one of its angles. I had chosen it for the sake of thisexceptional ornament. It was damp and dark, and the floors felt grittyto the feet; it was an establishment at which the dreadful _gras-double_might have appeared at the table d'hôte, as it had done at Narbonne. Nevertheless I was glad to get back to it; and nevertheless too--andthis is the moral of my simple anecdote--my pointless little walk (Idon't speak of the pavement) suffuses itself, as I look back upon it, with a romantic tone. And in relation to the inn I suppose I had bettermention that I am well aware of the inconsistency of a person whodislikes the modern caravansary and yet grumbles when he finds a hotelof the superannuated sort. One ought to choose, it would seem, and makethe best of either alternative. The two old taverns at Arles are quiteunimproved; such as they must have been in the infancy of the modernworld, when Stendhal passed that way and the lumbering diligencedeposited him in the Place des Hommes, such in every detail they areto-day. _Vieilles auberges de France_, one ought to enjoy their grittyfloors and greasy window-panes. Let it be put on record therefore that Ihave been, I won't say less comfortable, but at least less happy, atbetter inns. To be really historic, I should have mentioned that before going to lookfor the Rhone I had spent part of the evening on the opposite side ofthe little place, and that I indulged in this recreation for twodefinite reasons. One of these was that I had an opportunity ofgossiping at a café with a conversable young Englishman whom I had metin the afternoon at Tarascon and more remotely, in other years, inLondon; the other was that there sat enthroned behind the counter asplendid mature Arlésienne, whom my companion and I agreed that it was arare privilege to contemplate. There is no rule of good manners ormorals which makes it improper, at a café, to fix one's eyes upon the_dame de comptoir_; the lady is, in the nature of things, a part of your_consummation_. We were therefore free to [Illustration: ARLES--ST. TROPHIMUS] admire without restriction the handsomest person I had ever seen givechange for a five-franc piece. She was a large quiet woman, who wouldnever see forty again; of an intensely feminine type, yet wonderfullyrich and robust, and full of a certain physical nobleness. Though shewas not really old, she was antique; and she was very grave, even alittle sad. She had the dignity of a Roman empress, and she handledcoppers as if they had been stamped with the head of Cæsar. I have seenwasherwomen in the Trastevere who were perhaps as handsome as she; buteven the head-dress of the Roman contadina contributes less to thedignity of the person born to wear it than the sweet and statelyArlesian cap, which sits at once aloft and on the back of the head;which is accompanied with a wide black bow covering a considerable partof the crown; and which, finally, accommodates itself indescribably wellto the manner in which the tresses of the front are pushed behind theears. This admirable dispenser of lumps of sugar has distracted me a little, for I am still not sufficiently historical. Before going to the café Ihad dined, and before dining I had found time to go and look at thearena. Then it was that I discovered that Arles has no generalphysiognomy and, except the delightful little church of Saint Trophimus, no architecture, and that the rugosities of its dirty lanes affect thefeet like knife-blades. It was not then, on the other hand, that I sawthe arena best. The second day of my stay at Arles I devoted to apilgrimage to the strange old hill town of Les Baux, the mediævalPompeii, of which I shall give myself the pleasure of speaking. Theevening of that day, however (my friend and I returned in time for alate dinner), I wandered among the Roman remains of the place by thelight of a magnificent moon and gathered an impression which has lostlittle of its silvery glow. The moon of the evening before had beenaqueous and erratic; but if on the present occasion it was guilty of anyirregularity, the worst it did was only to linger beyond its time in theheavens in order to let us look at things comfortably. The effect wasadmirable; it brought back the impression of the way, in Rome itself, onevenings like that, the moonshine rests upon broken shafts and slabs ofantique pavement. As we sat in the theatre looking at the two lonecolumns that survive--part of the decoration of the back of thestage--and at the fragments of ruin around them, we might have been inthe Roman Forum. The arena at Arles, with its great magnitude, is lesscomplete than that of Nîmes; it has suffered even more the assaults oftime and the children of time, and it has been less repaired. The seatsare almost wholly wanting; but the external walls, minus the topmosttier of arches, are massively, ruggedly complete; and the vaultedcorridors seem as solid as the day they were built. The whole thing issuperbly vast and as monumental, for a place of light amusement--what iscalled in America a "variety-show"--as it entered only into the Romanmind to make such establishments. The _podium_ is much higher than atNîmes, and many of the great white slabs that faced it have beenrecovered and put into their places. The proconsular box has been moreor less reconstructed, and the great converging passages of approach toit are still majestically distinct; so that, as I sat there in themoon-charmed stillness, leaning my elbows on the battered parapet of thering, it was not impossible to listen to the murmurs and shudders, thethick voice of the circus, that died away fifteen hundred years ago. [Illustration: ARLES--RUINS OF THE ROMAN THEATRE] The theatre has a voice as well, but it lingers on the ear of time witha different music. The Roman theatre at Arles seemed to me one of themost charming and touching ruins I had ever beheld; I took a particularfancy to it. It is less than a skeleton--the arena may be called askeleton--for it consists only of half a dozen bones. The traces of therow of columns which formed the scene--the permanent back-scene--remain;two marble pillars--I just mentioned them--are upright, with a fragmentof their entablature. Before them is the vacant space which was filledby the stage, with the line of the proscenium distinct, marked by a deepgroove impressed upon slabs of stone, which looks as if the bottom of ahigh screen had been intended to fit into it. The semicircle formed bythe seats--half a cup--rises opposite; some of the rows are distinctlymarked. The floor, from the bottom of the stage, in the shape of an arcof which the chord is formed by the line of the orchestra, is covered byslabs of coloured marble--red, yellow and green--which, though terriblybattered and cracked to-day, give one an idea of the elegance of theinterior. Everything shows that it was on a great scale: the large sweepof its enclosing walls, the massive corridors that passed behind theauditorium and of which we can still perfectly take the measure. The wayin which every seat commanded the stage is a lesson to the architects ofour epochs, as also the immense size of the place is a proof ofextraordinary power of voice on the part of the Roman actors. It wasafter we had spent half an hour in the moonshine at the arena that wecame on to this more ghostly and more exquisite ruin. The principalentrance was locked, but we effected an easy _escalade_, scaled a lowparapet, and descended into the place behind the scenes. It was as lightas day, and the solitude was complete. The two slim columns, as we saton the broken benches, stood there like a pair of silent actors. What Icalled touching just now was the thought that here the human voice, theutterance of a great language, had been supreme. The air was full ofintonations and cadences; not of the echo of smashing blows, of rivenarmour, of howling victims and roaring beasts. The spot is, in short, one of the sweetest legacies of the ancient world; and there seems noprofanation in the fact that by day it is open to the good people ofArles, who use it to pass, by no means in great numbers, from one partof the town to the other; treading the old marble floor and brushing, ifneed be, the empty benches. This familiarity does not kill the placeagain; it makes it, on the contrary, live a little--makes the presentand the past touch each other. [Illustration] Chapter xxxi [Arles: the Museum] The third lion of Arles has nothing to do with the ancient world, butonly with the old one. The church of Saint Trophimus, whose wonderfulromanesque porch is the principal ornament of the principal _place_--a_place_ otherwise distinguished by the presence of a slim and taperingobelisk in the middle, as well as by that of the hôtel de ville and themuseum--the interesting church of Saint Trophimus swears a little, asthe French say, with the peculiar character of Arles. It is veryremarkable, but I would rather it were in another place. Arles isdelightfully pagan, and Saint Trophimus, with its apostolic sculptures, is rather a false note. These sculptures are equally remarkable fortheir primitive vigour and for the perfect preservation in which theyhave come down to us. The deep recess of a round-arched porch of thetwelfth century is covered with quaint figures which have not lost anose or a finger. An angular Byzantine-looking Christ sits in adiamond-shaped frame at the summit of the arch, surrounded by littleangels, by great apostles, by winged beasts, by a hundred sacred symbolsand grotesque ornaments. It is a dense embroidery of sculpture, blackwith time, but as uninjured as if it had been kept under glass. One goodmark for the French Revolution! Of the interior of the church, which hasa nave of the twelfth century and a choir three hundred years morerecent, I chiefly remember the odd feature that the romanesque aislesare so narrow that you literally--or almost--squeeze through them. Youdo so with some eagerness, for your natural purpose is to pass out tothe cloister. This cloister, as distinguished and as perfect as theporch, has a great deal of charm. Its four sides, which are not of thesame period (the earliest and best are of the twelfth century), have anelaborate arcade, supported on delicate pairs of columns, the capitalsof which show an extraordinary variety of device and ornament. At thecorners of the quadrangle these columns take the form of curious humanfigures. The whole thing is a gem of lightness and preservation and isoften cited for its beauty; but--if it doesn't sound too profane--Iprefer, especially at Arles, the ruins of the Roman theatre. The antiqueelement is too precious to be mingled with anything less rare. Thistruth was very present to my mind during a ramble of a couple of hoursthat I took just before leaving the place; and the glowing beauty of themorning gave the last touch to the impression. I spent half an hour atthe Museum; then I took another look at the Roman [Illustration: ARLES--DOOR OF ST. TROPHIMUS. ] theatre; after which I walked a little out of the town to the Aliscamps, the old Elysian Fields, the meagre remnant of the old pagan place ofsepulture, which was afterwards used by the Christians, but has been forages deserted and now consists only of a melancholy avenue of cypresseslined with a succession of ancient sarcophagi, empty, mossy andmutilated. An iron-foundry, or some horrible establishment which isconditioned upon tall chimneys and a noise of hammering and banging, hasbeen established near at hand; but the cypresses shut it out wellenough, and this small patch of Elysium is a very romantic corner. The door of the Museum stands ajar, and a vigilant custodian, with theusual batch of photographs on his mind, peeps out at you disapprovinglywhile you linger opposite, before the charming portal of SaintTrophimus, which you may look at for nothing. When you succumb to thesilent influence of his eye and go over to visit his collection, youfind yourself in a desecrated church, in which a variety of ancientobjects disinterred in Arlesian soil have been arranged without anypomp. The best of these, I believe, were found in the ruins of thetheatre. Some of the most curious of them are early Christiansarcophagi, exactly on the pagan model, but covered with rude yetvigorously wrought images of the apostles and with illustrations ofscriptural history. Beauty of the highest kind, either of conception orof execution, is absent from most of the Roman fragments, which belongto the taste of a late period and a provincial civilisation. But a gulfdivides them from the bristling little imagery of the Christiansarcophagi, in which, at the same time, one detects a vague emulation ofthe rich examples by which their authors were surrounded. There is acertain element of style in all the pagan things; there is not a hintof it in the early Christian relics, among which, according to M. Joanne, of the Guide, are to be found more fine sarcophagi than in anycollection but that of St. John Lateran. In two or three of the Romanfragments there is a noticeable distinction; principally in a charmingbust of a boy, quite perfect, with those salient eyes that one sees inantique portraits, and to which the absence of vision in the marble maskgives a look, often very touching, as of a baffled effort to see; alsoin the head of a woman, found in the ruins of the theatre, who, alas!has lost her nose and whose noble, simple contour, barring thisdeficiency, recalls the great manner of the Venus of Milo. There arevarious rich architectural fragments which indicate that that edificewas a very splendid affair. This little Museum at Arles, in short, isthe most Roman thing I know of out of Rome. [Illustration: ARLES--THE CLOISTERS] [Illustration] Chapter xxxii [Les Baux] I find that I declared one evening, in a little journal I was keeping atthat time, that I was weary of writing (I was probably very sleepy), butthat it was essential I should make some note of my visit to Les Baux. Imust have gone to sleep as soon as I had recorded this necessity, for Isearch my small diary in vain for any account of that enchanting spot. Ihave nothing but my memory to consult--a memory which is fairly good inregard to a general impression, but is terribly infirm in the matter ofdetails and items. We knew in advance, my companion and I, that Les Bauxwas a pearl of picturesqueness; for had we not read as much in thehandbook of Murray, who has the testimony of an English nobleman as toits attractions? We also knew that it lay some miles from Arles, on thecrest of the Alpilles, the craggy little mountains which, as I stood onthe breezy platform of Beaucaire, formed to my eye a charming, ifsomewhat remote, background to Tarascon; this assurance having beengiven us by the landlady of the inn at Arles, of whom we hired a ratherlumbering conveyance. The weather was not promising, but it proved agood day for the mediæval Pompeii; a grey, melancholy, moist, butrainless, or almost rainless day, with nothing in the sky to flout, asthe poet says, the dejected and pulverised past. The drive itself wascharming, for there is an inexhaustible sweetness in the grey-greenlandscape of Provence. It is never absolutely flat and yet is neverreally ambitious, and is full both of entertainment and repose. It is inconstant undulation, and the bareness of the soil lends itself easily tooutline and profile. When I say the bareness I mean the absence of woodsand hedges. It blooms with heath and scented shrubs and stunted olive, and the white rock shining through the scattered herbage has abrightness which answers to the brightness of the sky. Of course itneeds the sunshine, for all southern countries look a little false underthe ground-glass of incipient bad weather. This was the case on the dayof my pilgrimage to Les Baux. Nevertheless I was glad to keep going, asI was to arrive; and as I went it seemed to me that true happiness wouldconsist in wandering through such a land on foot, on Septemberafternoons, when one might stretch one's self on the warm ground in someshady hollow and listen to the hum of bees and the whistle of melancholyshepherds; for in Provence the shepherds whistle to their flocks. I sawtwo or three of them, in the course of this drive to Les Baux, meandering about, looking behind and calling upon the sheep in this wayto follow, which the sheep always did, very promptly, with ovineunanimity. Nothing is more picturesque than to see a slow shepherdthreading his way down one of the winding paths on a hillside, with hisflock close behind him, necessarily expanded, yet keeping just at hisheels, bending and twisting as it goes and looking rather like the tailof a dingy comet. About four miles from Arles, as you drive northward towards theAlpilles, of which Alphonse Daudet has spoken so often and, as he mightsay, so intimately, stand on a hill that overlooks the road the veryconsiderable ruins of the abbey of Montmajour, one of the innumerableremnants of a feudal and ecclesiastical (as well as an architectural)past that one encounters in the south of France; remnants which, it mustbe confessed, tend to introduce a certain confusion and satiety into thepassive mind of the tourist. Montmajour, however, is very impressive andinteresting; the only trouble with it is that, unless you have stoppedand returned to Arles, you see it in memory over the head of Les Baux, which is a much more absorbing picture. A part of the mass of buildings(the monastery) dates only from the last century; and the stiffarchitecture of that period does not lend itself very gracefully todesolation: it looks too much as if it had been burnt down the yearbefore. The monastery was demolished during the Revolution, and itinjures a little the effect of the very much more ancient fragments thatare connected with it. The whole place is on a great scale; it was arich and splendid abbey. The church, a vast basilica of the eleventhcentury and of the noblest proportions, is virtually intact; I mean asregards its essentials, for the details have completely vanished. Thehuge solid shell is full of expression; it looks as if it had beenhollowed out by the sincerity of early faith, and it opens into acloister as impressive as itself. Wherever one goes, in France, onemeets, looking backward a little, the spectre of the great Revolution;and one meets it always in the shape of the destruction of somethingbeautiful and precious. To make us forgive it at all, how much it mustalso have destroyed that was more hateful than itself! Beneath thechurch of Montmajour is a most extraordinary crypt, almost as big as theedifice above it and making a complete subterranean temple, surroundedwith a circular gallery, or deambulatory, which expands at intervalsinto five square chapels. There are other things, of which I have but aconfused memory: a great fortified keep; a queer little primitive chapelhollowed out of the rock beneath these later structures and recommendedto the visitor's attention as the confessional of Saint Trophimus, whoshares with so many worthies the glory of being the first apostle of theGauls. Then there is a strange, small church, of the dimmest antiquity, standing at a distance from the other buildings. I remember that afterwe had let ourselves down a good many steepish places to visit cryptsand confessionals, we walked across a field to this archaic cruciformedifice and went thence to a point farther down the road, where ourcarriage was awaiting us. The chapel of the Holy Cross, as it is called, is classed among the historic monuments of France; and I read in aqueer, rambling, ill-written book which I picked at Avignon, and inwhich the author, M. Louis de Laincel, has buried a great deal ofcurious information on the subject of Provence under a style inspiringlittle confidence, that the "délicieuse chapelle de Sainte-Croix" is a"véritable bijou artistique. " He speaks of "a piece of lace in stone"which runs from one end of the building to the other, but of which I amobliged to confess that I have no recollection. I retain, however, asufficiently clear impression of the little superannuated temple, withits four apses and its perceptible odour of antiquity--the odour of theeleventh century. The ruins of Les Baux remain quite indistinguishable even when you aredirectly beneath them, at the foot of the charming little Alpilles, which mass themselves with a kind of delicate ruggedness. Rock and ruinhave been so welded together by the confusions of time that as youapproach it from behind--that is, from the direction of Arles--the placepresents simply a general air of cragginess. Nothing can be prettierthan the crags of Provence; they are beautifully modelled, as painterssay, and they have a delightful silvery colour. The road winds round thefoot of the hills on the top of which Les Baux is planted, and passesinto another valley, from which the approach to the town is many degreesless precipitous and may be comfortably made in a carriage. Of coursethe deeply inquiring traveller will alight as promptly as possible, forthe pleasure of climbing into this queerest of cities on foot is not theleast part of the entertainment of going there. Then you appreciate itsextraordinary position, its picturesqueness, its steepness, itsdesolation and decay. It hangs--that is, what remains of it--to theslanting summit of the mountain. Nothing would be more natural than forthe whole place to roll down into the valley. A part of it has doneso--for it is not unjust to suppose that in the process of decay thecrumbled particles have sought the lower level, while the remainderstill clings to its magnificent perch. If I called Les Baux a city, just above, it was not that I wasstretching a point in favour of the small spot which to-day contains buta few dozen inhabitants. The history of the place is as extraordinary asits situation. It was not only a city, but a state; not only a state, but an empire; and on the crest of its little mountain called itselfsovereign of a territory, or at least of scattered towns and counties, with which its present aspect is grotesquely out of relation. The lordsof Les Baux, in a word, were great feudal proprietors; and there was atime during which the island of Sardinia, to say nothing of placesnearer home, such as Arles and Marseilles, paid them homage. Thechronicle of this old Provençal house has been written, in a stylesomewhat unctuous and flowery, by M. Jules Canonge. I purchased thelittle book--a modest pamphlet--at the establishment of the goodsisters, just beside the church, in one of the highest parts of LesBaux. The sisters have a school for the hardy little Baussenques, whom Iheard piping their lessons while I waited in the cold _parloir_ for oneof the ladies to come and speak to me. Nothing could have been moreperfect than the manner of this excellent woman when she arrived; yether small religious house seemed a very out-of-the-way corner of theworld. It was spotlessly neat, and the rooms looked as if they hadlately been papered and painted: in this respect, at the mediævalPompeii, they were rather a discord. They were, at any rate, the newest, freshest thing at Les Baux. I remember going round to the church after Ihad left the good sisters, and to a little quiet terrace which stands infront of it, ornamented with a few small trees and bordered with a wall, breast-high, over which you look down steep hillsides, off into the airand all about the neighbouring country. I remember saying to myself thatthis little terrace was one of those felicitous nooks which the touristof taste keeps in his mind as a picture. The church was small and brownand dark, with a certain rustic richness. All this, however, is nogeneral description of Les Baux. I am unable to give any coherent account of the place, for the simplereason that it is a mere confusion of ruin. It has not been preserved inlava like Pompeii, and its streets and houses, its ramparts and castle, have become fragmentary not through the sudden destruction, but throughthe gradual withdrawal, of a population. It is not an extinguished, buta deserted city; more deserted far than even Carcassonne andAigues-Mortes, where I found so much entertainment in the grass-grownelement. It is of very small extent, and even in the days of itsgreatness, when its lords entitled themselves counts of Cephalonia andNeophantis, kings of Arles and Vienne, princes of Achaia and emperors ofConstantinople--even at this flourishing period, when, as M. JulesCanonge remarks, "they were able to depress the balance in which thefate of peoples and kings is weighed, " the plucky little city containedat the most no more than thirty-six hundred souls. Yet its lords (who, however, as I have said, were able to present a long list of subjecttowns, most of them, though a few are renowned, unknown to fame) wereseneschals and captains-general of Piedmont and Lombardy, grand admiralsof the kingdom of Naples, and its ladies were sought in marriage by halfthe first princes in Europe. A considerable part of the little narrativeof M. Canonge is taken up with the great alliances of the House of Baux, whose fortunes, matrimonial and other, he traces from the eleventhcentury down to the sixteenth. The empty shells of a considerable numberof old houses, many of which must have been superb, the lines of certainsteep little streets, the foundations of a castle, and ever so manysplendid views, are all that remains to-day of these great titles. Tosuch a list I may add a dozen very polite and sympathetic people whoemerged from the interstices of the desultory little town to gaze at thetwo foreigners who had driven over from Arles and whose horses werebeing baited at the modest inn. The resources of this establishment wedid not venture otherwise to test, in spite of the seductive fact thatthe sign over the door was in the Provençal tongue. This little groupincluded the baker, a rather melancholy young man, in high boots and acloak, with whom and his companions we had a good deal of conversation. The Baussenques of to-day struck me as a very mild and agreeable race, with a good deal of the natural amenity which, on occasions like thisone, the traveller who is waiting for his horses to be put in or hisdinner to be prepared observes in the charming people who lendthemselves to conversation in the hill-towns of Tuscany. The spot whereour entertainers at Les Baux congregated was naturally the mostinhabited portion of the town; as I say, there were at least a dozenhuman figures within sight. Presently we wandered away from them, scaledthe higher places, seated ourselves among the ruins of the castle, andlooked down from the cliff overhanging that portion of the road which Ihave mentioned as approaching Les Baux from behind. I was unable totrace the configuration of the castle as plainly as the writers who havedescribed it in the guide-books, and I am ashamed to say that I did noteven perceive the three great figures of stone (the three Marys, as theyare called; the two Marys of Scripture, with Martha) which constituteone of the curiosities of the place and of which M. Jules Canonge speakswith almost hyperbolical admiration. A brisk shower, lasting some tenminutes, led us to take refuge in a cavity of mysterious origin, wherethe melancholy baker presently discovered us, having had the _bonnepensée_ of coming up for us with an umbrella which certainly belonged, in former ages, to one of the Stéphanettes or Berangères commemorated byM. Canonge. His oven, I am afraid, was cold so long as our visit lasted. When the rain was over we wandered down to the little disencumberedspace before the inn, through a small labyrinth of obliterated things. They took the form of narrow, precipitous streets bordered by emptyhouses with gaping windows and absent doors, through which we hadglimpses of sculptured chimney-pieces and fragments of stately arch andvault. Some of the houses are still inhabited, but most of them are opento the air and weather. Some of them have completely collapsed; otherspresent to the street a front which enables one to judge of thephysiognomy of Les Baux in the days of its importance. This importancehad pretty well passed away in the early part of the sixteenth century, when the place ceased to be an independent principality. It became--bybequest of one of its lords, Bernardin des Baux, a great captain of histime--part of the appanage of the kings of France, by whom it was placedunder the protection of Arles, which had formerly occupied with regardto it a different position. I know not whether the Arlesians neglectedtheir trust, but the extinction of the sturdy little stronghold is toocomplete not to have begun long ago. Its memories are buried under itsponderous stones. As we drove away from it in the gloaming my friend andI agreed that the two or three hours we had spent there were among thehappiest impressions of a pair of tourists very curious of thepicturesque. We almost forgot that we were bound to regret that theshortened day left us no time to drive five miles farther, above a passin the little mountains--it had beckoned to us in the morning, when wecame in sight of it, almost irresistibly--to see the Roman arch andmausoleum of Saint Remy. To compass this larger excursion (including thevisit to Les Baux) you must start from Arles very early in the morning;but I can imagine no more delightful day. [Illustration] Chapter xxxiii [Avignon] I had been twice at Avignon before, and yet I was not satisfied. Iprobably am satisfied now; nevertheless I enjoyed my third visit. Ishall not soon forget the first, on which a particular emotion set anindelible stamp. I was creeping northward, in 1870, after four monthsspent, for the first time, in Italy. It was the middle of January, and Ihad found myself unexpectedly forced to return to England for the restof the winter. It was an insufferable disappointment; I was wretched andbroken-hearted. Italy appeared to me at that time so much better thananything else in the world, that to rise from table in the middle of thefeast was a prospect of being hungry for the rest of my days. I hadheard a great deal of praise of the south of France; but the south ofFrance was a poor consolation. In this state of mind I arrived atAvignon, which under a bright, hard winter sun was tingling--fairlyspinning--with the _mistral_. I find in my journal of the other day areference to the acuteness of my reluctance in January 1870. France, after Italy, appeared in the language of the latter country _pocosimpatica_; and I thought it necessary, for reasons now inconceivable, to read the _Figaro_, which was filled with descriptions of the horribleTroppmann, the murderer of the _famille_ Kink. Troppmann, Kink, _lecrime de Pantin_--the very names that figured in this episode seemed towave me back. Had I abandoned the sonorous south to associate withvocables so base? It was very cold the other day at Avignon, for though there was nomistral, it was raining as it rains in Provence, and the dampness had aterrible chill in it. As I sat by my fire late at night--for in genialAvignon, in October, I had to have a fire--it came back to me thateleven years before I had at that same hour sat by a fire in that sameroom and, writing to a friend to whom I was not afraid to appearextravagant, had made a vow that at some happier period of the future Iwould avenge myself on the _ci-devant_ city of the Popes by taking it ina contrary sense. I suppose that I redeemed my vow on the occasion of mysecond visit better than on my third; for then I was on my way to Italy, and that vengeance, of course, was complete. The only drawback was thatI was in such a hurry to get to Ventimiglia (where the Italiancustom-house was to be the sign of my triumph), that I scarcely tooktime to make it clear to myself at Avignon that this was better thanreading the _Figaro_. I hurried on almost too fast to enjoy theconsciousness of moving southward. On this last occasion I wasunfortunately destitute of that happy faith. Avignon was my southernmostlimit, after which I was to turn round and proceed back to England. Butin the interval I had been a great deal in Italy, and that made all thedifference. I had plenty of time to think of this, for the rain kept mepractically housed for the first twenty-four hours. It had been rainingin these regions for a month, and people had begun to look askance atthe Rhone, though as yet the volume of the river was not exorbitant. Theonly excursion possible, while the torrent descended, was a kind ofhorizontal dive, accompanied with infinite splashing, to the little_musée_ of the town, which is within a moderate walk of the hotel. I hada memory of it from my first visit; it had appeared to me more pictorialthan its pictures. I found that recollection had flattered it a little, and that it is neither better nor worse than most provincial museums. Ithas the usual musty chill in the air, the usual grass-grown forecourt, in which a few lumpish Roman fragments are disposed, the usual red tileson the floor and the usual specimens of the more livid schools on thewalls. I rang up the _gardien_, who arrived with a bunch of keys, wipinghis mouth; he unlocked doors for me, opened shutters, and while (to mydistress, as if the things had been worth lingering over) he shuffledabout after me, he announced the names of the pictures before which Istopped in a voice that reverberated through the melancholy halls andseemed to make the authorship shameful when it was obscure and grotesquewhen it pretended to be great. Then there were intervals of silence, while I stared absent-mindedly, at haphazard, at some indistinguishablecanvas and the only sound was the downpour of the rain on the skylights. The museum of Avignon derives a certain dignity from its Romanfragments. The town has no Roman monuments to show; in this respect, beside its brilliant neighbours, Arles and Nîmes, it is a blank. But agreat many small objects have been found in its soil--pottery, glass, bronzes, lamps, vessels and ornaments of gold and silver. The glass isespecially charming--small vessels of the most delicate shape andsubstance, many of them perfectly preserved. These diminutive, intimatethings bring one near to the old Roman life; they seems like pearlsstrung upon the slender thread that swings across the gulf of time. Alittle glass cup that Roman lips have touched says more to us than thegreat vessel of an arena. There are two small silver _casseroles_, withchiselled handles, in the museum of Avignon, that struck me as among themost charming survivals of antiquity. [Avignon the Palace of the Popes] I did wrong, just above, to speak of my attack on this establishment asthe only recreation I took that first wet day; for I remember a terriblymoist visit to the former palace of the Popes, which could have takenplace only in the same tempestuous hours. It is true that I scarcelyknow why I should have gone out to see the Papal palace in the rain, forI had been over it twice before, and even then had not found theinterest of the place so complete as it ought to be; the factnevertheless remains that this last occasion is much associated with anumbrella, which was not superfluous even in some of the chambers andcorridors of the gigantic pile. It had already seemed to me thedreariest of all historical buildings, and my final visit confirmed theimpression. The place is as intricate as it is vast, and as desolate asit is dirty. The imagination has, for some reason or other, to make morethan the effort usual in such cases to restore and repeople it. The factindeed is simply that the palace has been so incalculably abused andaltered. The alterations have been so numerous that, though I have dulyconned the enumerations, supplied in guide-books, of the principal [Illustration: AVIGNON--THE CHURCH] perversions, I do not pretend to carry any of them in my head. The hugebare mass, without ornament, without grace, despoiled of its battlementsand defaced with sordid modern windows, covering the Rocher des Doms andlooking down over the Rhone and the broken bridge of Saint-Bénazet(which stops in such a sketchable manner in mid-stream), and across atthe lonely tower of Philippe le Bel and the ruined wall of Villeneuve, makes at a distance, in spite of its poverty, a great figure, the effectof which is carried out by the tower of the church beside it (crownedthough the latter be, in a top-heavy fashion, with an immense modernimage of the Virgin) and by the thick, dark foliage of the garden laidout on a still higher portion of the eminence. This garden recallsfaintly and a trifle perversely the grounds of the Pincian at Rome. Iknow not whether it is the shadow of the Papal name, present in bothplaces, combined with a vague analogy between the churches--which, approached in each case by a flight of steps, seemed to defend theprecinct--but each time I have seen the Promenade des Doms it hascarried my thoughts to the wider and loftier terrace from which you lookaway at the Tiber and Saint Peter's. As you stand before the Papal palace, and especially as you enter it, you are struck with its being a very dull monument. History enough wasenacted here: the great schism lasted from 1305 to 1370, during whichseven Popes, all Frenchmen, carried on the court of Avignon onprinciples that have not commended themselves to the esteem ofposterity. But history has been whitewashed away, and the scandals ofthat period have mingled with the dust of dilapidations and repairs. Thebuilding has for many years been occupied as a barrack for regiments ofthe line, and the main characteristics of a barrack--an extreme nudityand a very queer smell--prevail throughout its endless compartments. Nothing could have been more cruelly dismal than the appearance itpresented at the time of this third visit of mine. A regiment, changingquarters, had departed the day before, and another was expected toarrive (from Algeria) on the morrow. The place had been left in thebefouled and belittered condition which marks the passage of themilitary after they have broken camp, and it would offer but amelancholy welcome to the regiment that was about to take possession. Enormous windows had been left carelessly open all over the building, and the rain and wind were beating into empty rooms and passages, makingdraughts which purified, perhaps, but which scarcely cheered. For anarrival it was horrible. A handful of soldiers had remained behind. Inone of the big vaulted rooms several of them were lying on theirwretched beds, in the dim light, in the cold, in the damp, with thebleak bare walls before them and their overcoats, spread over them, pulled up to their noses. I pitied them immensely, though they may havefelt less wretched than they looked. I thought not of the oldprofligacies and crimes, not of the funnel-shaped torture-chamber(which, after exciting the shudder of generations, has been ascertainednow, I believe, to have been a mediæval bakehouse), not of the tower ofthe _glacière_ and the horrors perpetrated here in the Revolution, butof the military burden of young France. One wonders how young Franceendures it, and one is forced to believe that the French conscript has, in addition to his notorious good-humour, greater toughness than iscommonly supposed by those who consider only the more relaxinginfluences of French civilisation. I hope he finds occasionalcompensation for such moments as I saw those damp young peasants passingon the mattresses of their hideous barrack, without anything around toremind them that they were in the most civilised of countries. The onlytraces of former splendour now visible in the Papal pile are the wallsand vaults of two small chapels, painted in fresco, so battered andeffaced as to be scarcely distinguishable, by Simone Memmi. It offers ofcourse a peculiarly good field for restoration, and I believe theGovernment intend to take it in hand. I mention this fact without asigh, for they cannot well make it less interesting than it is atpresent. [Illustration] Chapter xxxiv [Villeneuve-lès-Avignon] Fortunately it did not rain every day (though I believe it was rainingeverywhere else in the department); otherwise I should not have beenable to go to Villeneuve and to Vaucluse. The afternoon indeed waslovely when I walked over the interminable bridge that spans the twoarms of the Rhone, divided here by a considerable island, and directedmy course, like a solitary horseman--on foot, to the lonely tower whichforms one of the outworks of Villeneuve-lès-Avignon. The picturesque, half-deserted little town lies a couple of miles farther up the river. The immense round towers of its old citadel and the long stretches ofruined wall covering the slope on which it lies are the most strikingfeatures of the nearer view, as you look from Avignon across the Rhone. I spent a couple of hours in visiting these objects, and there was akind of pictorial sweetness in the episode; but I have not many detailsto relate. The isolated tower I just mentioned has much in common withthe detached donjon of Montmajour, which I had looked at in going to LesBaux and to which I paid my respects in speaking of that excursion. Also the work of Philippe le Bel (built in 1307), it is amazingly bigand stubborn, and formed the opposite limit of the broken bridge whosefirst arches (on the side of Avignon) alone remain to give a measure ofthe occasional volume of the Rhone. Half an hour's walk brought me toVilleneuve, which lies away from the river, looking like a big villagehalf depopulated and occupied for the most part by dogs and cats, oldwomen and small children; these last, in general, remarkably pretty, inthe manner of the children of Provence. You pass through the place, which seems in a singular degree vague and unconscious, and come to therounded hill on which the ruined abbey lifts its yellow walls--theBenedictine abbey of Saint-André, at once a church, a monastery, and afortress. A large part of the crumbling enceinte disposes itself overthe hill; but for the rest, all that has preserved any traceablecohesion is a considerable portion of the citadel. The defence of theplace appears to have been entrusted largely to the huge round towersthat flank the old gate; one of which, the more complete, the ancientwarden (having first inducted me into his own dusky little apartment andpresented me with a great bunch of lavender) enabled me to examine indetail. I would almost have dispensed with the privilege, for I think Ihave already mentioned that an acquaintance with many feudal interiorshas wrought a sad confusion in my mind. The image of the outside alwaysremains distinct; I keep it apart from other images of the same sort; itmakes, a picture sufficiently ineffaceable. But the guard-rooms, windingstaircases, loopholes, prisons, repeat themselves and intermingle; theyhave a wearisome family likeness. There are always black passages andcorners, and walls twenty feet thick; and there is always some highplace to climb up to for the sake of a "magnificent" view. The views, too, are apt to run together. These dense gate-towers of Philippe le Belstruck me, however, as peculiarly wicked and grim. Their capacity is ofthe largest, and they contain ever so many devilish little dungeons, lighted by the narrowest slit in the prodigious wall, where it comesover one with a good deal of vividness and still more horror thatwretched human beings once lay there rotting in the dark. The dungeonsof Villeneuve made a particular impression on me--greater than anyexcept those of Loches, which must surely be the most gruesome inEurope. I hasten to add that every dark hole at Villeneuve is called adungeon; and I believe it is well established that in this manner, inalmost all old castles and towers, the sensibilities of the moderntourist are unscrupulously played upon. There were plenty of black holesin the Middle Ages that were not dungeons, but household receptacles ofvarious kinds; and many a tear dropped in pity for the groaning captivehas really been addressed to the spirits of the larder and thefaggot-nook. For all this, there are some very bad corners in the towersof Villeneuve, so that I was not wide of the mark when I began to thinkagain, as I had often thought before, of the stoutness of the humancomposition in the Middle Ages and the tranquillity of nerve of peopleto whom the groaning captive and the blackness of a "living tomb" werefamiliar ideas which did not at all interfere with their happiness ortheir sanity. Our modern nerves, our irritable sympathies, our easydiscomforts and fears, make one think (in some relations) lessrespectfully of human nature. Unless indeed it be true, as I have heardit maintained, that in the Middle Ages every one did go mad--every one_was_ mad. The theory that this was a period of general dementia is notaltogether untenable. Within the old walls of its immense abbey the town of Villeneuve hasbuilt itself a rough faubourg; the fragments with which the soil wascovered having been, i suppose, a quarry of material. There are nostreets; the small, shabby houses, almost hovels, straggle at randomover the uneven ground. The only important feature is a convent ofcloistered nuns, who have a large garden (always within the walls)behind their house, and whose doleful establishment you look down into, or down at simply, from the battlements of the citadel. One or two ofthe nuns were passing in and out of the house; they wore grey robes witha bright red cape. I thought their situation most provincial. I cameaway and wandered a little over the base of the hill, outside the walls. Small white stones cropped through the grass, over which low olive-treeswere scattered. The afternoon had a yellow brightness. I sat down underone of the little trees, on the grass--the delicate grey branches werenot much above my head--and rested and looked at Avignon across theRhone. It was very soft, very still and pleasant, though I am not sureit was all I once should have expected of that combination of elements:an old city wall for a background, a canopy of olives, and for a couchthe soil of Provence. When I came back to Avignon the twilight wasalready thick, but I walked up to the Rocher des Doms. Here I again hadthe benefit of that amiable moon which had already lighted up for me somany romantic scenes. She was full, and she rose over the Rhone and madeit look in the distance like a silver serpent. I remember saying tomyself at this moment that it would be a beautiful evening to walkround the walls of Avignon--the remarkable walls which challengecomparison with those of Carcassonne and Aigues-Mortes, and which it wasmy duty, as an observer of the picturesque, to examine with someattention. Presenting themselves to that silver sheen, they could notfail to be impressive. So, at least, I said to myself; but unfortunatelyI did not believe what I said. It is a melancholy fact that the walls ofAvignon had never impressed me at all, and I had never taken the troubleto make the circuit. They are continuous and complete, but for somemysterious reason they fail of their effect. This is partly because theyare very low, in some places almost absurdly so, being buried in newaccumulations of soil and by the filling in of the moat up to theirmiddle. Then they have been too well tended; they not only look atpresent very new, but look as if they had never been old. The fact thattheir extent is very much greater makes them more of a curiosity thanthose of Carcassonne; but this is exactly, at the same time, what isfatal to their pictorial unity. With their thirty-seven towers and sevengates, they lose themselves too much to make a picture that will comparewith the admirable little vignette of Carcassonne. I may mention, nowthat I am speaking of the general mass of Avignon, that nothing is morecurious than the way in which, viewed from a distance, it is all reducedto naught by the vast bulk of the palace of the Popes. From across theRhone, or from the train as you leave the place, this great grey blockis all Avignon; it seems to occupy the whole city, extensive, with itsshrunken population, as the city is. [Illustration] Chapter xxxv [Vaucluse] It was the morning after this, I think (a certain Saturday), that when Icame out of the Hôtel de l'Europe, which lies in shallow concavity justwithin the city gate that opens on the Rhone--came out to look at thesky from the little _place_ before the inn and see how the weatherpromised for the obligatory excursion to Vaucluse--I found the wholetown in a terrible taking. I say the whole town advisedly, for everyinhabitant appeared to have taken up a position on the bank of theriver, or on the uppermost parts of the promenade of the Doms, where aview of its course was to be obtained. It had risen surprisingly in thenight, and the good people of Avignon had reason to know what a rise ofthe Rhone might signify. The town, in its lower portions, is quite atthe mercy of the swollen waters; and it was mentioned to me that in 1856the Hôtel de l'Europe, in its convenient hollow, was flooded up towithin a few feet of the ceiling of the dining-room, where the longboard which had served for so many a table d'hôte floated disreputably, with its legs in the air. On the present occasion the mountains of theArdêche, where it had been raining for a month, had sent down torrentswhich, all that fine Friday night, by the light of the innocent-lookingmoon, poured themselves into the Rhone and its tributary the Durance. The river was enormous and continued to rise, and the sight wasbeautiful and horrible. The water in many places was already at the baseof the city walls, the quay, with its parapet just emerging, beingalready covered. The country, seen from the Plateau des Doms, resembleda vast lake, with protrusions of trees, houses, bridges, gates. Thepeople looked at it in silence, as I had seen people before--on theoccasion of a rise of the Arno, at Pisa--appear to consider the prospectof an inundation. "Il monte; il monte toujours"--there was not much saidbut that. It was a general holiday, and there was an air of wishing toprofit, for sociability's sake, by any interruption of the commonplace(the popular mind likes "a change, " and the element of change mitigatesthe sense of disaster); but the affair was not otherwise a holiday. Suspense and anxiety were in the air, and it never is pleasant to bereminded of the helplessness of man. In the presence of a loosenedriver, with its ravaging, unconquerable volume, this impression is asstrong as possible; and as I looked at the deluge which threatened tomake an island of the Papal palace I perceived that the scourge of wateris greater than the scourge of fire. A blaze may be quenched, but wherecould the flame be kindled that would arrest the quadrupled Rhone? Forthe population of Avignon a good deal was at stake, and I am almostashamed to confess that in the midst of the public alarm I consideredthe situation from the point of view of the little projects of asentimental tourist. Would the prospective inundation interfere with myvisit to Vaucluse, or make it imprudent to linger twenty-four hourslonger at Avignon? I must add that the tourist was not perhaps, afterall, so sentimental. I have spoken of the pilgrimage to the shrine ofPetrarch as obligatory, and that was, in fact, the light in which itpresented itself to me; all the more that I had been twice at Avignonwithout undertaking it. This is why I was vexed at the Rhone. --if vexedI was--for representing as impracticable an excursion which I carednothing about. How little I cared was manifest from my inaction onformer occasions. I had a prejudice against Vaucluse, against Petrarch, even against the incomparable Laura. I was sure that the place wascockneyfied and threadbare, and I had never been able to take aninterest in the poet and the lady. I was sure that I had known manywomen as charming and as handsome as she, about whom much less noise hadbeen made; and I was convinced that her singer was factitious andliterary, and that there are half a dozen stanzas in Wordsworth thatspeak more to the soul than the whole collection of his _fioriture_. This was the crude state of mind in which I determined to go, at anyrisk, to Vaucluse. Now that I think it over, I seem to remember that Ihad hoped, after all, that the submersion of the roads would forbid it. Since morning the clouds had gathered again, and by noon they were soheavy that there was every prospect of a torrent. It appeared absurd tochoose such a time as this to visit a fountain--a fountain which wouldbe indistinguishable in the general cataract. Nevertheless I took avow, that if at noon the rain should not have begun to descend uponAvignon I would repair to the head-spring of the Sorgues. When thecritical moment arrived the clouds were hanging over Avignon likedistended water-bags, which only needed a prick to empty themselves. Theprick was not given, however; all nature was too much occupied infollowing the aberrations of the Rhone to think of playing trickselsewhere. Accordingly I started for the station in a spirit which, fora tourist who sometimes had prided himself on his unfailing supply ofsentiment, was shockingly perfunctory. "For tasks in hours of insight willed May be in hours of gloom fulfilled. " I remembered these lines of Matthew Arnold (written, apparently, in anhour of gloom), and carried out the idea, as I went, by hoping that withthe return of insight I should be glad to have seen Vaucluse. Light hasdescended upon me since then, and I declare that the excursion is inevery way to be recommended. The place makes a great impression, quiteapart from Petrarch and Laura. There was no rain; there was only, all the afternoon, a mild, moist windand a sky magnificently black; which made a _repoussoir_ for the palercliffs of the fountain. The road, by train, crosses a flat, expressionless country, towards the range of arid hills which lie to theeast of Avignon, and which spring (says Murray) from the mass of theMont-Ventoux. At Isle-sur-Sorgues, at the end of about an hour, theforeground becomes much more animated and the distance much more (orperhaps I should say much less) actual. I descended from the train andascended to the top of an omnibus which was to convey me into therecesses of the hills. It had not been among my previsions that Ishould be indebted to a vehicle of that kind for an opportunity tocommune with the spirit of Petrarch; and I had to borrow whatconsolation I could from the fact that at least I had the omnibus tomyself. I was the only passenger; every one else was at Avignon watchingthe Rhone. I lost no time in perceiving that I could not have come toVaucluse at a better moment. The Sorgues was almost as full as theRhone, and of a colour much more romantic. Rushing along its narrowedchannel under an avenue of fine _platanes_ (it is confined between solidlittle embankments of stone), with the good wives of the village, on thebrink, washing their linen in its contemptuous flood, it gave promise ofhigh entertainment farther on. The drive to Vaucluse is of about three-quarters of an hour; and thoughthe river, as I say, was promising, the big pale hills, as the roadwinds into them, did not look as if their slopes of stone and shrub werea nestling-place for superior scenery. It is a part of the merit ofVaucluse indeed that it is as much as possible a surprise. The place hasa right to its name, for the valley appears impenetrable until you getfairly into it. One perverse twist follows another until the omnibussuddenly deposits you in front of the "cabinet" of Petrarch. After thatyou have only to walk along the left bank of the river. The cabinet ofPetrarch is to-day a hideous little _café_, bedizened, like a signboard, with extracts from the ingenious "Rime. " The poet and his lady are ofcourse the stock-in-trade of the little village, which has had forseveral generations the privilege of attracting young couples engaged intheir wedding-tour and other votaries of the tender passion. The placehas long been familiar, on festal Sundays, to the swains of Avignon andtheir attendant nymphs. The little fish of the Sorgues are muchesteemed, and, eaten on the spot, they constitute, for the children ofthe once Papal city, the classic suburban dinner. Vaucluse has beenturned to account, however, not only by sentiment, but by industry; thebanks of the stream being disfigured by a pair of hideous mills for themanufacture of paper and of wool. In an enterprising and economical agethe water-power of the Sorgues was too obvious a motive; and I must saythat, as the torrent rushed past them, the wheels of the dirty littlefactories appeared to turn merrily enough. The footpath on the leftbank, of which I just spoke, carries one fortunately quite out of sightof them, and out of sound as well, inasmuch as on the day of my visitthe stream itself, which was in tremendous force, tended more and more, as one approached the fountain, to fill the valley with its own echoes. Its colour was magnificent, and the whole spectacle more like a cornerof Switzerland than a nook in Provence. The protrusions of the mountainshut it in, and you penetrate to the bottom of the recess which theyform. The Sorgues rushes and rushes; it is almost like Niagara after thejump of the cataract. There are dreadful little booths beside the path, for the sale of photographs and _immortelles_--I don't know what one isto do with the immortelles--where you are offered a brush dipped in tarto write your name withal on the rocks. Thousands of vulgar persons, ofboth sexes, and exclusively, it appeared, of the French nationality, hadavailed themselves of this implement, for every square inch ofaccessible stone was scored over with some human appellation. It is notonly we in America, therefore, who besmirch our scenery; the practice [Illustration: VAUCLUSE--RUINS OF CASTLE] exists, in a more organised form (like everything else in France), inthe country of good taste. You leave the little booths and stallsbehind; but the bescribbled crag, bristling with human vanity, keeps youcompany even when you stand face to face with the fountain. This happenswhen you find yourself at the foot of the enormous straight cliff out ofwhich the river gushes. It rears itself to an extraordinary height--ahuge forehead of bare stone--looking as if it were the half of atremendous mound split open by volcanic action. The little valley, seeing it there, at a bend, stops suddenly and receives in its arms themagical spring. I call it magical on account of the mysterious manner inwhich it comes into the world, with the huge shoulder of the mountainrising over it as if to protect the secret. From under the mountain itsilently rises, without visible movement, filling a small natural basinwith the stillest blue water. The contrast between the stillness of thisbasin and the agitation of the water directly after it has overflowed, constitutes half the charm of Vaucluse. The violence of the stream whenonce it has been set loose on the rocks is as fascinating andindescribable as that of other cataracts; and the rocks in the bed ofthe Sorgues have been arranged by a master-hand. The setting of thephenomenon struck me as so simple and so fine--the vast sad cliff, covered with the afternoon light, still and solid for ever, while theliquid element rages and roars at its base--that I had no difficulty inunderstanding the celebrity of Vaucluse. I understood it, but I will notsay that I understood Petrarch. He must have been very self-supporting, and Madonna Laura must indeed have been much to him. The aridity of the hills that shut in the valley is complete, and thewhole impression is best conveyed by that very expressive French epithet_morne_. There are the very fragmentary ruins of a castle (of one of thebishops of Cavaillon) on a high spur of the mountain, above the river;and there is another remnant of a feudal habitation on one of the moreaccessible ledges. Having half an hour to spare before my omnibus was toleave (I must beg the reader's pardon for this atrociously false note;call the vehicle a _diligence_, and for some undiscoverable reason theoffence is minimised), I clambered up to this latter spot and sat amongthe rocks in the company of a few stunted olives. The Sorgues, beneathme, reaching the plain, flung itself crookedly across the meadows likean unrolled blue ribbon. I tried to think of the _amant de Laure_, forliterature's sake; but I had no great success, and the most I could dowas to say to myself that I must try again. Several months have elapsedsince then, and I am ashamed to confess that the trial has not yet comeoff. The only very definite conviction I arrived at was that Vaucluse isindeed cockneyfied, but that I should have been a fool, all the same, not to come. [Illustration] Chapter xxxvi [Orange] Mounted into my diligence at the door of the Hôtel de Pétrarque et deLaure, and we made our way back to Isle-sur-Sorgues in the fading light. This village, where at six o'clock every one appeared to have gone tobed, was fairly darkened by its high, dense plane-trees, under which therushing river, on a level with its parapets, looked unnaturally, almostwickedly, blue. It was a glimpse which has left a picture in my mind:the little closed houses, the place empty and soundless in the autumndusk but for the noise of waters, and in the middle, amid the blacknessof the shade, the gleam of the swift, strange tide. At the station everyone was talking of the inundation being in many places an accomplishedfact, and, in particular, of the condition of the Durance at some pointthat I have forgotten. At Avignon, an hour later, I found the water insome of the streets. The sky cleared in the evening, the moon lighted upthe submerged suburbs, and the population again collected in the highplaces to enjoy the spectacle. It exhibited a certain sameness, however, and by nine o'clock there was considerable animation in the PlaceCrillon, where there is nothing to be seen but the front of the theatreand of several cafés--in addition indeed to a statue of this celebratedbrave, whose valour redeemed some of the numerous military disasters ofthe reign of Louis XV. The next morning the lower quarters of the townwere in a pitiful state: the situation seemed to me odious. To expressmy disapproval of it I lost no time in taking the train to Orange, which, with its other attractions, had the merit of not being seated onthe Rhone. It was destiny to move northward; but even if I had been atliberty to follow a less unnatural course I should not then haveundertaken it, inasmuch as the railway between Avignon and Marseilleswas credibly reported to be (in places) under water. This was the casewith almost everything but the line itself on the way to Orange. The dayproved splendid, and its brilliancy only lighted up the desolation. Farmhouses and cottages were up to their middle in the yellow liquidity;haystacks looked like dull little islands; windows and doors gaped open, without faces; and interruption and flight were represented in thescene. It was brought home to me that the _populations rurales_ havemany different ways of suffering, and my heart glowed with a gratefulsense of cockneyism. It was under the influence of this emotion that Ialighted at Orange to visit a collection of eminently civil monuments. The collection consists of but two objects, but these objects are sofine that I will let the word pass. One of them is a triumphal arch, supposedly of the period of Marcus Aurelius; the other is a fragment, magnificent in its ruin, of a Roman theatre. But for these fine Romanremains and for its name, Orange is a perfectly featureless little town, without the Rhone--which, as I have mentioned, is several milesdistant--to help it to a physiognomy. It seems one of the oddest thingsthat this obscure French borough--obscure, I mean, in our modern era, for the Gallo-Roman Arausio must have been, judging it by its arches andtheatre, a place of some importance--should have given its name to theheirs-apparent of the throne of Holland and been borne by a king ofEngland who had sovereign rights over it. During the Middle Ages itformed part of an independent principality; but in 1531 it fell, by themarriage of one of its princesses, who had inherited it, into the familyof Nassau. I read in my indispensable Murray that it was made over toFrance by the treaty of Utrecht. The arch of triumph, which stands alittle way out of the town, is rather a pretty than an imposing vestigeof the Romans. If it had greater purity of style one might say of itthat it belonged to the same family of monuments as the Maison Carrée atNîmes. It has three passages--the middle much higher than theothers--and a very elevated attic. The vaults of the passages are richlysculptured, and the whole structure is covered with friezes and militarytrophies. This sculpture is rather mixed; much of it is broken anddefaced, and the rest seemed to me ugly, though its workmanship ispraised. The arch is at once well preserved and much injured. Itsgeneral mass is there, and as Roman monuments go it is remarkablyperfect; but it has suffered, in patches, from the extremity ofrestoration. It is not, on the whole, of absorbing interest. It has acharm, nevertheless, which comes partly from its soft, bright yellowcolour, partly from a certain elegance of shape, of expression; and onthat well-washed Sunday morning, with its brilliant tone, surrounded byits circle of thin poplars, with the green country lying beyond it and alow blue horizon showing through its empty portals, it made, verysufficiently, a picture that hangs itself to one of the lateral hooks ofthe memory. I can take down the modest composition and place it beforeme as I write. I see the shallow, shining puddles in the hard, fairFrench road; the pale blue sky, diluted by days of rain; thedisgarnished autumnal fields; the mild sparkle of the low horizon; thesolitary figure in sabots, with a bundle under its arm, advancing alongthe _chaussée_; and in the middle I see the little ochre-coloured trioof apertures, which, in spite of its antiquity, looks bright and gay, aseverything must look in France of a fresh Sunday morning. It is true that this was not exactly the appearance of the Romantheatre, which lies on the other side of the town; a fact that did notprevent me from making my way to it in less than five minutes, through asuccession of little streets concerning which I have no observations torecord. None of the Roman remains in the south of France are moreimpressive than this stupendous fragment. An enormous mound rises abovethe place, which was formerly occupied--I quote from Murray--first by acitadel of the Romans, then by a castle of the princes of Nassau, razedby Louis XIV. Facing this hill a mighty wall erects itself, thirty-sixmetres high and composed of massive blocks of dark brown stone simplylaid one on the other; the whole naked, rugged [Illustration: ORANGE--THE THEATRE. ] surface of which suggests a natural cliff (say of the Vaucluse order)rather than an effort of human or even of Roman labour. It is thebiggest thing at Orange--it is bigger than all Orange put together--andits permanent massiveness makes light of the shrunken city. The face itpresents to the town--the top of it garnished with two rows of bracketsperforated with holes to receive the staves of the _velarium_--bears thetraces of more than one tier of ornamental arches; though how these flatarches were applied, or incrusted, upon the wall, I do not profess toexplain. You pass through a diminutive postern--which seems inproportion about as high as the entrance of a rabbit-hutch--into thelodge of the custodian, who introduces you to the interior of thetheatre. Here the mass of the hill affronts you, which the ingeniousRomans treated simply as the material of their auditorium. They insertedtheir stone seats, in a semicircle, in the slope of the hill, andplanted their colossal wall opposite to it. This wall, from the inside, is, if possible, even more imposing. It formed the back of the stage, the permanent scene, and its enormous face was coated with marble. Itcontains three doors, the middle one being the highest and having aboveit, far aloft, a deep niche apparently intended for an imperial statue. A few of the benches remain on the hillside, which, however, is mainly aconfusion of fragments. There is part of a corridor built into the hill, high up, and on the crest are the remnants of the demolished castle. Thewhole place is a kind of wilderness of ruin; there are scarcely anydetails; the great feature is the overtopping wall. This wall being theback of the scene, the space left between it and the chord of thesemicircle (of the auditorium) which formed the proscenium is ratherless than one would have supposed. In other words, the stage was veryshallow, and appears to have been arranged for a number of performersplaced in a line like a company of soldiers. There stands the silentskeleton, however, as impressive by what it leaves you to guess andwonder about as by what it tells you. It has not the sweetness, thesoftness of melancholy, of the theatre at Aries; but it is moreextraordinary, and one can imagine only tremendous tragedies beingenacted there-- "Presenting Thebes' or Pelops' line. " At either end of the stage, coming forward, is an immense wing--immensein height, I mean, as it reaches to the top of the scenic wall; theother dimensions are not remarkable. The division to the right, _as you_face the stage, is pointed out as the green-room; its portentousaltitude and the open arches at the top give it the air of a well. Thecompartment on the left is exactly similar, save that it opens into thetraces of other chambers, said to be those of a hippodrome adjacent tothe theatre. Various fragments are visible which refer themselvesplausibly to such an establishment; the greater axis of the hippodromewould appear to have been on a line with the triumphal arch. This is allI saw, and all there was to see, of Orange, which had a very rustic, bucolic aspect, and where I was not even called upon to demand breakfastat the hotel. The entrance of this resort might have been that of astable of the Roman days. [Illustration] Chapter xxxvii [Macon] I have been trying to remember whether I fasted all the way to Macon, which I reached at an advanced hour of the evening, and think I musthave done so except for the purchase of a box of nougat at Montélimart(the place is famous for the manufacture of this confection, which, atthe station, is hawked at the windows of the train) and for a bouillon, very much later, at Lyons. The journey beside the Rhone--past Valence, past Tournon, past Vienne--would have been charming, on that luminousSunday, but for two disagreeable accidents. The express from Marseilles, which I took at Orange, was full to overflowing; and the only refuge Icould find was an inside angle in a carriage laden with Germans who hadcommand of the windows, which they occupied as strongly as they havebeen known to occupy other strategical positions. I scarcely know, however, why I linger on this particular discomfort, for it was but asingle item in a considerable list of grievances--grievances dispersedthrough six weeks of constant railway-travel in France. I have nottouched upon them at an earlier stage of this chronicle, but my reserveis not owing to any sweetness of association. This form of locomotion, in the country of the amenities, is attended with a dozen discomforts;almost all the conditions of the business are detestable. They force thesentimental tourist again and again to ask himself whether, inconsideration of such mortal annoyances, the game is worth the candle. Fortunately a railway journey is a good deal like a sea-voyage; itsmiseries fade from the mind as soon as you arrive. That is why Icompleted, to my great satisfaction, my little tour in France. Let thissmall effusion of ill-nature be my first and last tribute to the wholedespotic _gare_: the deadly _salle d'attente_, the insufferable delaysover one's luggage, the porterless platform, the overcrowded andilliberal train. How many a time did I permit myself the secretreflection that it is in perfidious Albion that they order this matterbest! How many a time did the eager British mercenary, clad in velveteenand clinging to the door of the carriage as it glides into the station, revisit my invidious dreams! The paternal porter and the responsivehansom are among the best gifts of the English genius to the world. Ihasten to add, faithful to my habit (so insufferable to some of myfriends) of ever and again readjusting the balance after I have given itan honest tip, that the bouillon at Lyons, which I spoke of above, was, though by no means an idea bouillon, much better than any I could haveobtained at an English railway-station. After I had imbibed it I sat inthe train (which waited a long time at Lyons) and, by the light of oneof the big lamps on the platform, read all sorts of disagreeable thingsin certain [Illustration: LYONS. ] radical newspapers which I had bought at the bookstall. I gathered fromthese sheets that Lyons was in extreme commotion. The Rhone and theSaone, which form a girdle for the splendid town, were almost in thestreets, as I could easily believe from what I had seen of the countryafter leaving Orange. The Rhone, all the way to Lyons, had been in allsorts of places where it had no business to be, and matters werenaturally not improved by its confluence with the charming and copiousstream which, at Macon, is said once to have given such a happyopportunity to the egotism of the capital. A visitor from Paris (theanecdote is very old), being asked on the quay of that city whether hedidn't admire the Saone, replied good-naturedly that it was very pretty, but that in Paris they spelled it with the _ei_. This moment of generalalarm at Lyons had been chosen by certain ingenious persons (I creditthem perhaps with too sure a prevision of the rise of the rivers) forpractising further upon the apprehensions of the public. A bombshellfilled with dynamite had been thrown into a café, and various votariesof the comparatively innocuous _petit verre_ had been wounded (I am notsure whether any one had been killed) by the irruption. Of course therehad been arrests and incarcerations, and the _Intransigeant_ and the_Rappel_ were filled with the echoes of the explosion. The tone of theseorgans is rarely edifying, and it had never been less so than on thisoccasion. I wondered as I looked through them whether I was losing allmy radicalism; and then I wondered whether, after all, I had any tolose. Even in so long a wait as that tiresome delay at Lyons I failed tosettle the question, any more than I made up my mind as to the probablefuture of the militant democracy, or the ultimate form of acivilisation which should have blown up everything else. A few dayslater the water went down at Lyons; but the democracy has not gone down. I remember vividly the remainder of that evening which I spent atMacon--remember it with a chattering of the teeth. I know not what hadgot into the place; the temperature, for the last day of October, waseccentric and incredible. These epithets may also be applied to thehotel itself--an extraordinary structure, all façade, which exposes anuncovered rear to the gaze of nature. There is a demonstrative, volublelandlady, who is of course part of the façade; but everything behind heris a trap for the winds, with chambers, corridors, staircases allexhibited to the sky as if the outer wall of the house had been liftedoff. It would have been delightful for Florida, but it didn't do forBurgundy even on the eve of November 1, so that I suffered absurdly fromthe rigour of a season that had not yet begun. There was something inthe air; I felt it the next day, even on the sunny quay of the Saone, where in spite of a fine southerly exposure I extracted little warmthfrom the reflection that Alphonse de Lamartine had often trodden theflags. Macon struck me, somehow, as suffering from a chronic numbness, and there was nothing exceptionally cheerful in the remarkable extensionof the river. It was no longer a river--it had become a lake; and frommy window, in the painted face of the inn, I saw that the opposite bankhad been moved back, as it were, indefinitely. Unfortunately the variousobjects with which it was furnished had not been moved as well, theconsequence of which was an extraordinary confusion in the relations ofthings. There were always poplars to be seen, but the poplar had becomean aquatic plant. Such phenomena, however, at Macon attract but littleattention, as the Saone, at certain seasons of the year, is nothing ifnot expansive. The people are as used to it as they appeared to be tothe bronze statue of Lamartine, which is the principal monument of the_place_, and which, representing the poet in a frogged overcoat andtop-boots, improvising in a high wind, struck me as even less casual inits attitude than monumental sculpture usually succeeds in being. It istrue that in its present position I thought better of this work of art, which is from the hand of M. Falguière, than when I had seen it throughthe factitious medium of the Salon of 1876. I walked up the hill wherethe older part of Macon lies, in search of the natal house of the _amantd'Elvire_, the Petrarch whose Vaucluse was the bosom of the public. TheGuide-Joanne quotes from "Les Confidences" a description of thebirthplace of the poet, whose treatment of the locality is indeedpoetical. It tallies strangely little with the reality, either asregards position or other features; and it may be said to be not an aid, but a direct obstacle, to a discovery of the house. A very humbleedifice, in a small back street, is designated by a municipal tablet, set into its face, as the scene of Lamartine's advent into the world. Hehimself speaks of a vast and lofty structure, at the angle of a _place_, adorned with iron clamps, with a _porte haute et large_ and many otherpeculiarities. The house with the tablet has two meagre storeys abovethe basement, and (at present, at least) an air of extreme shabbiness;the _place_, moreover, never can have been vast. Lamartine was accusedof writing history incorrectly, and apparently he started wrong atfirst; it had never become clear to him where he was born. Or is thetablet wrong? If the house is small, the tablet is very big. [Illustration] Chapter xxxviii [Bourg-en-Bresse] The foregoing reflections occur, in a cruder form, as it were, in mynote-book, where I find this remark appended to them: "Don't take leaveof Lamartine on that contemptuous note; it will be easy to think ofsomething more sympathetic!" Those friends of mine, mentioned a littlewhile since, who accuse me of always tipping back the balance, could notdesire a paragraph more characteristic; but I wish to give no furtherevidence of such infirmities, and will therefore hurry away from thesubject--hurry away in the train which, very early on a crisp, brightmorning, conveyed me, by way of an excursion, to the ancient city ofBourg-en-Bresse. Shining in early light, the Saone was spread, like asmooth white tablecloth, over a considerable part of the flat countrythat I traversed. There is no provision made in this image for the long, transparent screens of thin-twigged trees which rose at intervals out ofthe watery plain; but as, in all the conditions, there seemed to be noprovision for them in fact, I will let my metaphor go for what it isworth. My journey was (as I remember it) of about an hour and a half;but I passed no object of interest, as the phrase is, whatever. Thephrase hardly applies even to Bourg itself, which is simply a town_quelconque_, as M. Zola would say. Small, peaceful, rustic, it standsin the midst of the great dairy-feeding plains of Bresse, of which fatcounty, sometime property of the house of Savoy, it was the modestcapital. The blue masses of the Jura give it a creditable horizon, butthe only nearer feature it can point to is its famous sepulchral church. This edifice lies at a fortunate distance from the town, which, thoughinoffensive, is of too common a stamp to consort with such a treasure. All I ever knew of the church of Brou I had gathered, years ago, fromMatthew Arnold's beautiful poem which bears its name. I rememberthinking, in those years, that it was impossible verses could be moretouching than these; and as I stood before the object of my pilgrimage, in the gay French light (though the place was so dull), I recalled thespot where I had first read them and where I had read them again and yetagain, wondering whether it would ever be my fortune to visit the churchof Brou. The spot in question was an armchair in a window which lookedout on some cows in a field; and whenever I glanced at the cows it cameover me--I scarcely know why--that I should probably never behold thestructure reared by the Duchess Margaret. Some of our visions never cometo pass; but we must be just--others do. "So sleep, for ever sleep, Oprincely pair!" I remembered that line of Matthew Arnold's, and thestanza about the Duchess Margaret coming to watch the builders on herpalfrey white. Then there came to me something in regard to the moonshining on winter nights through the cold clere-storey. The tone of theplace at that hour was not at all lunar; it was cold and bright, butwith the chill of an autumn morning; yet this, even with the fact of theunexpected remoteness of the church from the Jura added to it, did notprevent me from feeling that I looked at a monument in the production ofwhich--or at least in the effect of which on the tourist-mind ofto-day--Matthew Arnold had been much concerned. By a pardonable licencehe has placed it a few miles nearer to the forests of the Jura than itstands at present. It is very true that, though the mountains in thesixteenth century can hardly have been in a different position, theplain which separates the church from them may have been bedecked withwoods. The visitor to-day cannot help wondering why the beautifulbuilding, with its splendid works of art, is dropped down in thatparticular spot, which looks so accidental and arbitrary. But there arereasons for most things, and there were reasons why the church of Broushould be at Brou, which is a vague little suburb of a vague littletown. [The Church of Brou] The responsibility rests, at any rate, upon the DuchessMargaret--Margaret of Austria, daughter of the Emperor Maximilian andhis wife Mary of Burgundy, daughter of Charles the Bold. This lady has ahigh name in history, having been regent of the Netherlands in behalf ofher nephew, the Emperor Charles V. , of whose early education she had hadthe care. She married in 1501 Philibert the Handsome, Duke of Savoy, towhom the province of Bresse belonged, and who died two years later. Shehad been betrothed, as a child, to Charles VIII. Of France, and was keptfor some time at the French court--that of [Illustration: BROU--THE CHURCH. ] her prospective father-in-law, Louis XI. ; but she was eventuallyrepudiated, in order that her _fiancé_ might marry Anne of Brittany--analliance so magnificently political that we almost condone the offenceto a sensitive princess. Margaret did not want for husbands, however, inasmuch as before her marriage to Philibert she had been united to Johnof Castile, son of Ferdinand V. , King of Aragon--an episode terminatedby the death of the Spanish prince within a year. She was twenty-twoyears regent of the Netherlands and died, at fifty-one, in 1530. Shemight have been, had she chosen, the wife of Henry VII. Of England. Shewas one of the signers of the League of Cambray against the VenetianRepublic, and was a most politic, accomplished, and judicious princess. She undertook to build the church of Brou as a mausoleum for her secondhusband and herself, in fulfilment of a vow made by Margaret of Bourbon, mother of Philibert, who died before she could redeem her pledge and whobequeathed the duty to her son. He died shortly afterwards, and hiswidow assumed the pious task. According to Murray, she entrusted theerection of the church to "Maistre Loys von Berghem, " and the sculptureto "Maistre Conrad. " The author of a superstitious but carefullyprepared little Notice which I bought at Bourg calls the architect andsculptor (at once) Jehan de Paris, author (_sic_) of the tomb of FrancisII. Of Brittany, to which we gave some attention at Nantes, and whichthe writer of my pamphlet ascribes only subordinately to Michel Colomb. The church, which is not of great size, is in the last and mostflamboyant phase of gothic and in admirable preservation; the westfront, before which a quaint old sun-dial is laid out on the ground--acircle of numbers marked in stone, like those on a clock-face, let intothe earth--is covered with delicate ornament. The great feature, however(the nave is perfectly bare and wonderfully new-looking, though thewarden, a stolid yet sharp old peasant in a blouse, who looked more asif his line were chaffering over turnips than showing off works of art, told me that it has never been touched and that its freshness is simplythe quality of the stone)--the great feature is the admirable choir, inthe midst of which the three monuments have bloomed under the chisellike exotic plants in a conservatory. I saw the place to smalladvantage, for the stained glass of the windows, which are fine, wasunder repair, and much of it was masked with planks. In the centre lies Philibert-le-Bel, a figure of white marble on a greatslab of black, in his robes and his armour, with two boy-angels holdinga tablet at his head, and two more at his feet. On either side of him isanother cherub; one guarding his helmet, the other his stiff gauntlets. The attitudes of these charming children, whose faces are all bent uponhim in pity, have the prettiest tenderness and respect. The table onwhich he lies is supported by elaborate columns adorned with nichescontaining little images and with every other imaginable elegance; andbeneath it he is represented in that other form so common in the tombsof the Renaissance--a man naked and dying, with none of the state andsplendour of the image above. One of these figures embodies the duke, the other simply the mortal; and there is something very strange andstriking in the effect of the latter, seen dimly and with difficultythrough the intervals of the rich supports of the upper slab. Themonument of Margaret herself is on the left, all in white marbletormented into a multitude of exquisite patterns, the last extravaganceof a gothic which had gone so far that nothing was left it but to returnupon itself. Unlike her husband, who has only the high roof of thechurch above him, she lies under a canopy supported and covered by awilderness of embroidery--flowers, devices, initials, arabesques, statuettes. Watched over by cherubs, she is also in her robes andermine, with a greyhound sleeping at her feet (her husband, at his, hasa waking lion); and the artist has not, it is to be presumed, represented her as more beautiful than she was. She looks indeed likethe regent of a turbulent realm. Beneath her couch is stretched anotherfigure--a less brilliant Margaret, wrapped in her shroud, with her longhair over her shoulders. Round the tomb is the battered iron railingplaced there originally, with the mysterious motto of the duchess workedinto the top--_fortune infortune fort une_. The other two monuments areprotected by barriers of the same pattern. That of Margaret of Bourbon, Philibert's mother, stands on the right of the choir; and I suppose itsgreatest distinction is that it should have been erected to amother-in-law. It is but little less florid and sumptuous than theothers; it has, however, no second recumbent figure. On the other hand, the statuettes that surround the base of the tomb are of even moreexquisite workmanship: they represent weeping women, in long mantles andhoods, which latter hang forward over the small face of the figure, giving the artist a chance to carve the features within this hollow ofdrapery--an extraordinary play of skill. There is a high, white marbleshrine of the Virgin, as extraordinary as all the rest (a series ofcompartments representing the various scenes of her life, with theAssumption in the middle); and there is a magnificent series of stalls, which are simply the intricate embroidery of the tombs translated intopolished oak. All these things are splendid, ingenious, elaborate, precious; it is goldsmith's work on a monumental scale, and the generaleffect is none the less beautiful and solemn because it is so rich. Butthe monuments of the church of Brou are not the noblest that one maysee; the great tombs of Verona are finer, and various other earlyItalian work. These things are not insincere, as Ruskin would say; butthey are pretentious, and they are not positively _naïfs_. I shouldmention that the walls of the choir are embroidered in places withMargaret's tantalising device, which--partly perhaps because it istantalising--is so very decorative, as they say in London. I know notwhether she was acquainted with this epithet, but she had anticipatedone of the fashions most characteristic of our age. One asks one's self how all this decoration, this luxury of fair andchiselled marble, survived the French Revolution. An hour of liberty inthe choir of Brou would have been a carnival for the image-breakers. Thewell-fed Bressois are surely a good-natured people. I call them well-fedboth on general and on particular grounds. Their province has the mostsavoury aroma, and I found an opportunity to test its reputation. Iwalked back into the town from the church (there was really nothing tobe seen by the way), and as the hour of the midday breakfast had struck, directed my steps to the inn. The table d'hôte was going on, and agracious, bustling, talkative landlady welcomed me. I had an excellentrepast--the best repast possible--which consisted simply of boiled eggsand bread and butter. It was the quality of these simple ingredientsthat made the occasion memorable. The eggs were so good that I amashamed to say how many of them I consumed. "La plus belle fille dumonde, " as the French proverb says, "ne peut donner que ce qu'elle a;"and it might seem that an egg which has succeeded in being fresh hasdone all that can reasonably be expected of it. But there was a bloom ofpunctuality, so to speak, about these eggs of Bourg, as if it had beenthe intention of the very hens themselves that they should be promptlyserved. "Nous sommes en Bresse, et le beurre n'est pas mauvais, " thelandlady said with a sort of dry coquetry, as she placed this articlebefore me. It was the poetry of butter, and I ate a pound or two of it;after which I came away with a strange mixture of impressions of lategothic sculpture and thick _tartines_. I came away through the town, where, on a little green promenade, facing the hotel, is a bronze statueof Bichat the physiologist, who was a Bressois. I mention it not onaccount of its merit (though, as statues go, I don't remember that it isbad), but because I learned from it--my ignorance, doubtless, did melittle honour--that Bichat had died at thirty years of age, and thisrevelation was almost agitating. To have done so much in so short a lifewas to be truly great. This reflection, which looks deplorably trite asI write it here, had the effect of eloquence as I uttered it for my ownbenefit on the bare little mall at Bourg. [Illustration] Chapter xxxix [Beaune] On my return to Macon I found myself fairly face to face with the factthat my tour was near its end. Dijon had been marked by fate as itsfarthest limit, and Dijon was close at hand. After that I was to dropthe tourist and re-enter Paris as much as possible like a Parisian. Outof Paris the Parisian never loiters, and therefore it would beimpossible for me to stop between Dijon and the capital. But I might bea tourist a few hours longer by stopping somewhere between Macon andDijon. The question was where I should spend these hours. Where better, I asked myself (for reasons not now entirely clear to me), than atBeaune? On my way to this town I passed the stretch of the Côte d'Or, which, covered with a mellow autumn haze, with the sunshine shimmeringthrough, looked indeed like a golden slope. One regards with a kind ofawe the region in which the famous _crûs_ of Burgundy (Vougeot, Chambertin, Nuits, Beaune) are, I was going to say, manufactured. Adieu, paniers; vendanges sont faites! The vintage was over; the shrunkenrusset fibres alone clung to their ugly stick. The horizon on the leftof the road had a charm, however; there is something picturesque in thebig, comfortable shoulders of the Côte. That delicate critic M. EmileMontégut, in a charming record of travel through this region publishedsome years ago, praises Shakespeare for having talked (in "Lear") of"waterish Burgundy. " Vinous Burgundy would surely be more to the point. I stopped at Beaune in pursuit of the picturesque, but I might almosthave seen the little I discovered without stopping. It is a drowsyBurgundian town, very old and ripe, with crooked streets, vistas alwaysoblique, and steep, moss covered roofs. The principal lion is theHôpital-Saint-Esprit, or the Hôtel-Dieu simply, as they call it there, founded in 1443 by Nicholas Rollin, Chancellor of Burgundy. It isadministered by the sisterhood of the Holy Ghost, and is one of the mostvenerable and stately of hospitals. The face it presents to the streetis simple, but striking--a plain, windowless wall, surmounted by a vastslate roof, of almost mountainous steepness. Astride this roof sits atall, slate-covered spire, from which, as I arrived, the prettiestchimes I ever heard (worse luck to them, as I will presently explain)were ringing. Over the door is a high, quaint canopy, without supports, with its vault painted blue and covered with gilded stars. (This, andindeed the whole building, have lately been restored, and its antiquityis quite of the spick-and-span order. But it is very delightful. ) Thetreasure of the place is a precious picture--a Last Judgment, attributedequally to John van Eyck and Roger van der Weyden--given to the hospitalin the fifteenth century by Nicholas Rollin aforesaid. I learned, however, to my dismay, from a sympathising but inexorableconcierge, that what remained to me of the time I had to spend atBeaune, between trains--I had rashly wasted half an hour of it inbreakfasting at the station--was the one hour of the day (that of thedinner of the nuns; the picture is in their refectory) during which thetreasure could not be shown. The purpose of the musical chimes to whichI had so artlessly listened was to usher in this fruitless interval. Theregulation was absolute, and my disappointment relative, as I have beenhappy to reflect since I "looked up" the picture. Crowe and Cavalcaselleassign it without hesitation to Roger van der Weyden, and give a weaklittle drawing of it in their "Flemish Painters. " I learn from themalso--what I was ignorant of--that Nicholas Rollin, Chancellor ofBurgundy and founder of the establishment at Beaune, was the original ofthe worthy kneeling before the Virgin in the magnificent John van Eyckof the Salon Carré. All I could see was the court of the hospital andtwo or three rooms. The court, with its tall roofs, its pointed gablesand spires, its wooden galleries, its ancient well, with an elaboratesuperstructure of wrought iron, is one of those places into which asketcher ought to be let loose. It looked Flemish or English rather thanFrench, and a splendid tidiness pervaded it. The porter took me intotwo [Illustration: BEAUNE--THE HOSPITAL. ] rooms on the ground-floor, into which the sketcher should also beallowed to penetrate, for they made irresistible pictures. One of them, of great proportions, painted in elaborate "subjects" like a ball-roomof the seventeenth century, was filled with the beds of patients, alldraped in curtains of dark red cloth, the traditional uniform of theseeleemosynary couches. Among them the sisters moved about in their robesof white flannel with big white linen hoods. The other room was astrange, immense apartment, lately restored with much splendour. It wasof great length and height, had a painted and gilded barrel-roof, andone end of it--the one I was introduced to--appeared to serve as achapel, as two white-robed sisters were on their knees before an altar. This was divided by red curtains from the larger part; but the porterlifted one of the curtains and showed me that the rest of it, a long, imposing vista, served as a ward lined with little red-draped beds. "C'est l'heure de la lecture, " remarked my guide; and a group ofconvalescents--all the patients I saw were women--were gathered in thecentre around a nun, the points of whose white hood nodded a littleabove them and whose gentle voice came to us faintly, with a littleecho, down the high perspective. I know not what the good sister wasreading--a dull book, I am afraid--but there was so much colour and sucha fine, rich air of tradition about the whole place that it seemed to meI would have risked listening to her. I turned away, however, with thatsense of defeat which is always irritating to the appreciative tourist, and pottered about Beaune rather vaguely for the rest of my hour: lookedat the statue of Gaspard Monge, the mathematician, in the little _place_(there is no _place_ in France too little to contain an effigy to aglorious son); at the fine old porch--completely despoiled at theRevolution--of the principal church; and even at the meagre treasures ofa courageous but melancholy little museum, which has been arranged--partof it being the gift of a local collector--in a small hôtel de ville. Icarried away from Beaune the impression of something mildlyautumnal--something rusty yet kindly, like the taste of a sweet russetpear. [Illustration: DIJON. ] [Illustration] Chapter xl [Dijon] It was very well that my little tour was to terminate at Dijon, for Ifound, rather to my chagrin, that there was not a great deal, from thepictorial point of view, to be done with Dijon. It was no great matter, for I held my proposition to have been by this time abundantlydemonstrated--the proposition with which I started: that if Paris isFrance, France is by no means Paris. If Dijon was a good deal of adisappointment, I felt therefore that I could afford it. It was time forme to reflect, also, that for my disappointments, as a general thing, Ihad only myself to thank. They had too often been the consequence ofarbitrary preconceptions produced by influences of which I had lost thetrace. At any rate, I will say plumply that the ancient capital ofBurgundy is wanting in character; it is not up to the mark. It is oldand narrow and crooked, and it has been left pretty well to itself: butit is not high and overhanging; it is not, to the eye, what theBurgundian capital should be. It has some tortuous vistas, some mossyroofs, some bulging fronts, some grey-faced hotels, which look as if informer centuries--in the last, for instance, during the time of thatdelightful Président de Brosses whose Letters from Italy throw aninteresting sidelight on Dijon--they had witnessed a considerable amountof good living. But there is nothing else. I speak as a man who, forsome reason which he doesn't remember now, did not pay a visit to thecelebrated Puits de Moïse, an ancient cistern embellished with asculptured figure of the Hebrew lawgiver. The ancient palace of the dukes of Burgundy, long since converted intoan hôtel de ville, presents to a wide, clean court, paved withwashed-looking stones, and to a small semicircular _place_, opposite, which looks as if it had tried to be symmetrical and had failed, afaçade and two wings characterised by the stiffness, but not by thegrand air, of the early part of the eighteenth century. It contains, however, a large and rich museum--a museum really worthy of a capital. The gem of this collection is the great banqueting hall of the oldpalace, one of the few features of the place that has not beenessentially altered. Of great height, roofed with the old beams andcornices, it exhibits, [Illustration: DIJON--THE PARK. ] filling one end, a colossal gothic chimney-piece with a fireplace largeenough to roast, not an ox, but a herd of oxen. In the middle of thisstriking hall, the walls of which are covered with objects more or lessprecious, have been placed the tombs of Philippe-le-Hardi andJean-sans-Peur. These monuments, very splendid in their general effect, have a limited interest. The limitation comes from the fact that we seethem to-day in a transplanted and mutilated condition. Placed originallyin a church which has disappeared from the face of the earth, demolishedand dispersed at the Revolution, they have been reconstructed andrestored out of fragments recovered and pieced together. The piecing hasbeen beautifully done; it is covered with gilt and with brilliant paint;the whole result is most artistic. But the spell of the old mortuaryfigures is broken, and it will never work again. Meanwhile the monumentsare immensely decorative. I think the thing that pleased me best at Dijon was the little old Parc, a charming public garden, about a mile from the town, to which I walkedby a long, straight autumnal avenue. It is a _jardin français_ of thelast century--a dear old place, with little blue-green perspectives andalleys and _rond-points_, in which everything balances. I went therelate in the afternoon, without meeting a creature, though I had hoped Ishould meet the Président de Brosses. At the end of it was a littleriver that looked like a canal, and on the farther bank was anold-fashioned villa, close to the water, with a little French garden ofits own. On the hither side was a bench, on which I seated myself, lingering a good while; for this was just the sort of place I like. Itwas the farthermost point of my little tour. I thought that over, as Isat there, on the eve of taking the express to Paris; and as the lightfaded in the Parc the vision of some of the things I had enjoyed becamemore distinct. Printed by BALLANTYNE, HANSON & CO. London & Edinburgh