Chapter I

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THE CAR THAT WENT ABROAD

* * * * *

BOOKS BY

ALBERT BIGELOW PAINE

_For Grown-ups_

THE CAR THAT WENT ABROAD

THE LURE OF THE MEDITERRANEAN

DWELLERS IN ARCADY

FROM VAN-DWELLER TO COMMUTER

MOMENTS WITH MARK TWAIN

MARK TWAIN'S LETTERS

MARK TWAIN: A BIOGRAPHY

PEANUT: THE STORY OF A BOY

SHORT LIFE OF MARK TWAIN

LIFE OF THOMAS NAST

THE TENT-DWELLERS

_For Young Readers_

THE BOYS' LIFE OF MARK TWAIN

HOLLOW TREE NIGHTS AND DAYS

THE HOLLOW TREE AND DEEP-WOODS BOOK

THE HOLLOW TREE SNOWED-IN BOOK

_Small books of several stories each, selected from the above Hollow

Tree books:_

HOW MR. DOG GOT EVEN

HOW MR. RABBIT LOST HIS TAIL

MR. RABBIT'S BIG DINNER

MAKING UP WITH MR. DOG

MR. 'POSSUM'S GREAT BALLOON TRIP

MR RABBIT'S WEDDING

MR. CROW AND THE WHITEWASH

MR. TURTLE'S FLYING ADVENTURE

WHEN JACK RABBIT WAS A LITTLE BOY

HARPER & BROTHERS, NEW YORK

ESTABLISHED 1817

* * * * *

[Illustration: "THE NORMANDY ROAD TO CHERBOURG IS AS WONDERFUL AS ANY IN

FRANCE"--See p. 226]

THE CAR THAT WENT ABROAD

Motoring Through the Golden Age

by

ALBERT BIGELOW PAINE

Author of

"Dwellers in Arcady," "The Ship Dwellers," etc.

Illustrated from drawings by Walter Hale

[Illustration]

Harper & Brothers Publishers

New York and London

Copyright, 1921, by Harper & Brothers

CONTENTS

Part I

THE CAR THAT WENT ABROAD

CHAPTER PAGE

I. DON'T HURRY THROUGH MARSEILLES 3

II. MOTORING BY TRAM 9

III. ACROSS THE CRAU 19

IV. MISTRAL 27

V. THE ROME OF FRANCE 30

VI. THE WAY THROUGH EDEN 40

VII. TO TARASCON AND BEAUCAIRE 43

VIII. GLIMPSES OF THE PAST 48

IX. IN THE CITADEL OF FAITH 52

X. AN OLD TRADITION AND A NEW EXPERIENCE 58

XI. WAYSIDE ADVENTURES 65

XII. THE LOST NAPOLEON 72

XIII. THE HOUSE OF HEADS 79

XIV. INTO THE HILLS 85

XV. UP THE ISERE 89

XVI. INTO THE HAUTE-SAVOIE 94

XVII. SOME SWISS IMPRESSIONS 101

XVIII. THE LITTLE TOWN OF VEVEY 113

XIX. MASHING A MUD GUARD 123

XX. JUST FRENCH--THAT'S ALL 127

XXI. WE LUGE 131

Part II

MOTORING THROUGH THE GOLDEN AGE

I. THE NEW PLAN 143

II. THE NEW START 146

III. INTO THE JURAS 151

IV. A POEM IN ARCHITECTURE 160

V. VIENNE IN THE RAIN 164

VI. THE CHATEAU I DID NOT RENT 168

VII. AN HOUR AT ORANGE 172

VIII. THE ROAD TO PONT DU GARD 178

IX. THE LUXURY OF NIMES 182

X. THROUGH THE CEVENNES 186

XI. INTO THE AUVERGNE 193

XII. LE PUY 196

XIII. THE CENTER OF FRANCE 200

XIV. BETWEEN BILLY AND BESSEY 205

XV. THE HAUTE-LOIRE 209

XVI. NEARING PARIS 213

XVII. SUMMING UP THE COST 219

XVIII. THE ROAD TO CHERBOURG 223

XIX. BAYEUX, CAEN, AND ROUEN 228

XX. WE COME TO GRIEF 234

XXI. THE DAMAGE REPAIRED--BEAUVAIS AND COMPIEGNE 238

XXII. FROM PARIS TO CHARTRES AND CHATEAUDUN 244

XXIII. WE REACH TOURS 250

XXIV. CHINON, WHERE JOAN MET THE KING, AND AZAY 255

XXV. TOURS 260

XXVI. CHENONCEAUX AND AMBOISE 264

XXVII. CHAMBORD AND CLERY 271

XXVIII. ORLEANS 278

XXIX. FONTAINEBLEAU 283

XXX. RHEIMS 288

XXXI. ALONG THE MARNE 295

XXXII. DOMREMY 299

XXXIII. STRASSBURG AND THE BLACK FOREST 306

XXXIV. A LAND WHERE STORKS LIVE 313

XXXV. BACK TO VEVEY 316

XXXVI. THE GREAT UPHEAVAL 320

XXXVII. THE LONG TRAIL ENDS 336

ILLUSTRATIONS

"THE NORMANDY ROAD TO CHERBOURG IS AS WONDERFUL AS ANY IN

FRANCE" _Frontispiece_

"WHERE ROADS BRANCH OR CROSS THERE ARE SIGNBOARDS....

YOU CAN'T ASK A MAN 'QUEL EST LE CHEMIN' FOR ANYWHERE WHEN

YOU ARE IN FRONT OF A SIGNBOARD WHICH IS SHOUTING THE

INFORMATION" _Facing p._ 46

MARK TWAIN'S "LOST NAPOLEON"--"THE COLOSSAL SLEEPING FIGURE

IN ITS SUPREME REPOSE" 80

MARCHE VEVEY--"IN EACH TOWN THERE IS AN OPEN SQUARE, WHICH

TWICE A WEEK IS PICTURESQUELY CROWDED" 108

"YOU CAN SEE SON LOUP FROM THE HOTEL STEPS IN VEVEY, BUT IT

TAKES HOURS TO GET TO IT" 134

DESCENDING THE JURAS 162

THE TOMB OF MARGARET OF AUSTRIA, CHURCH OF BROU 162

"THROUGH HILLSIDE VILLAGES WHERE NEVER A STONE HAD BEEN

MOVED, I THINK, IN CENTURIES" 214

BIRTHPLACE OF JOAN OF ARC 308

STRASSBURG, SHOWING THE CATHEDRAL 308

PREFACE

FELLOW-WANDERER:

The curtain that so long darkened many of the world's happy

places is lifted at last. Quaint villages, old cities,

rolling hills, and velvet valleys once more beckon to the

traveler.

The chapters that follow tell the story of a small family

who went gypsying through that golden age before the war

when the tree-lined highways of France, the cherry-blossom

roads of the Black Forest, and the high trails of

Switzerland offered welcome to the motor nomad.

The impressions set down, while the colors were fresh and

warm with life, are offered now to those who will give a

thought to that time and perhaps go happily wandering

through the new age whose dawn is here.

A. B. P.

_June, 1921._

Part I

THE CAR THAT WENT ABROAD

Chapter I

DON'T HURRY THROUGH MARSEILLES

Originally I began this story with a number of instructive chapters on

shipping an automobile, and I followed with certain others full of

pertinent comment on ocean travel in a day when all the seas were as a

great pleasure pond. They were very good chapters, and I hated to part

with them, but my publisher had quite positive views on the matter. He

said those chapters were about as valuable now as June leaves are in

November, so I swept them aside in the same sad way that one disposes of

the autumn drift and said I would start with Marseilles, where, after

fourteen days of quiet sailing, we landed with our car one late August

afternoon.

Most travelers pass through Marseilles hastily--too hastily, it may be,

for their profit. It has taken some thousands of years to build the

"Pearl of the Mediterranean," and to walk up and down the rue Cannebiere

and drink coffee and fancy-colored liquids at little tables on the

sidewalk, interesting and delightful as that may be, is not to become

acquainted with the "pearl"--not in any large sense.

We had a very good and practical reason for not hurrying through

Marseilles. It would require a week or more to get our car through the

customs and obtain the necessary licenses and memberships for inland

travel. Meantime we would do some sight-seeing. We would begin

immediately.

Besides facing the Old Port (the ancient harbor) our hotel looked on the

end of the Cannebiere, which starts at the Quai and extends, as the

phrase goes, "as far as India," meaning that the nations of the East as

well as those of the West mingle there. We understood the saying as soon

as we got into the kaleidoscope. We were rather sober-hued bits

ourselves, but there were plenty of the other sort. It was the end of

August, and Marseilles is a semi-tropic port. There were plenty of white

costumes, of both men and women, and sprinkled among them the red fezzes

and embroidered coats and sashes of Algiers, Morocco, and the Farther

East. And there were ladies in filmy things, with bright hats and

parasols; and soldiers in uniforms of red and blue, while the wide

pavements of that dazzling street were literally covered with little

tables, almost to the edges. And all those gay people who were not

walking up and down, chatting and laughing, were seated at the little

tables with red and green and yellow drinks before them and pitchers of

ice or tiny cups of coffee, and all the seated people were laughing and

chattering, too, or reading papers and smoking, and nobody seemed to

have a sorrow or a care in the world. It was really an inspiring sight,

after the long, quiet days on the ship, and we loitered to enjoy it. It

was very busy around us. Tramcars jangled, motors honked, truckmen and

cabmen cracked their whips incessantly. Newswomen, their aprons full of

long pockets stuffed with papers, offered us journals in phrases that I

did not recognize as being in my French phonograph; cabmen hailed us in

more or less English and wanted to drive us somewhere; flower sellers'

booths lined both sides of a short street, and pretty girls held up

nosegays for us to see. Now and then a beggar put out a hand.

The pretty drinks and certain ices we saw made us covetous for them, but

we had not yet the courage to mingle with those gay people and try our

new machine-made French right there before everybody. So we slipped into

a dainty place--a _patisserie boulangerie_--and ordered coffee and

chocolate ice cream, and after long explanations on both sides got iced

coffee and hot chocolate, which was doing rather well, we thought, for

the first time, and, anyhow, it was quite delicious and served by a

pretty girl whose French was so limpid that one could make himself

believe he understood it, because it was pure music, which is not a

matter of arbitrary syllables at all.

We came out and blended with the panaroma once more. It was all so

entirely French, I said; no suggestion of America anywhere. But

Narcissa, aged fifteen, just then pointed to a flaming handbill over the

entrance of a cinematograph show. The poster was foreign, too, in its

phrasing, but the title, "_L'aventures d'Arizona Bill_" certainly had a

flavor of home. The Joy, who was ten, was for going in and putting

other things by, but we overruled her. Other signs attracted us--the

window cards and announcements were easy lessons in French and always

interesting.

By and by bouquets of lights breaking out along the streets reminded us

that it was evening and that we were hungry. There were plenty of

hotels, including our own, but the dining rooms looked big and warm and

expensive and we were dusty and economical and already warm enough. We

would stop at some open-air place, we said, and have something dainty

and modest and not heating to the blood. We thought it would be easy to

find such a place, for there were perfect seas of sidewalk tables,

thronged with people, who at first glance seemed to be dining. But we

discovered that they were only drinking, as before, and perhaps nibbling

at little cakes or rolls. When we made timid and rudimentary inquiries

of the busy waiters, they pointed toward the hotels or explained things

in words so glued together we could not sort them out. How different it

all was from New York, we said. Narcissa openly sighed to be back on

"old rue de Broadway," where there were restaurants big and little every

twenty steps.

We wandered into side streets and by and by found an open place with a

tiny green inclosure, where a few people certainly seemed to be eating.

We were not entirely satisfied with the look of the patrons, but they

were orderly, and some of them of good appearance. The little tables had

neat white cloths on them, and the glassware shone brightly in the

electric glow. So we took a corner position and studied the rather

elaborate and obscure bill of fare. It was written, and the few things

we could decipher did not seem cheap. We had heard about food being

reasonable in France, but single portions of fish or cutlets at ".45"

and broiled chicken at "1.20" could hardly be called cheap in this

retired and unpretentious corner. One might as well be in a better

place--in New York. We wondered how these unfashionable people about us

could look so contented and afford to order such liberal supplies. Then

suddenly a great light came. The price amounts were not in dollars and

cents, but in francs and centimes. The decimals were the same, only you

divided by five to get American values. There is ever so much

difference.[1]

The bill of fare suddenly took on a halo. It became almost unbelievable.

We were tempted to go--it was too cheap to be decent. But we were weary

and hungry, and we stayed. Later we were glad. We had those things which

the French make so well, no matter how humble the place--"_pot au feu,

bouillabaisse_" (the fish soup which is the pride of Marseilles--our

first introduction to it), lamb chops, a crisp salad, Gruyere cheese,

with a pint of red wine; and we paid--I try to blush when I tell it--a

total for our four of less than five francs--that is to say, something

under a dollar, including the tip, which was certainly large enough, if

one could judge from the lavish acknowledgment of the busy person who

served us.

We lingered while I smoked, observing some curious things. The place

filled up with a democratic crowd, including, as it did, what were

evidently well-to-do tradesmen and their families, clerks with their

young wives or sweethearts, single derelicts of both sexes, soldiers,

even workmen in blouses. Many of them seemed to be regular customers,

for they greeted the waiters and chatted with them during the serving.

Then we discovered a peculiar proof that these were in fact steady

patrons. In the inner restaurant were rows of hooks along the walls, and

at the corners some racks with other hooks. Upon these were hanging, not

hats or garments, but dozens of knotted white cloths which we discovered

presently to be table napkins, large white serviettes like our own.

While we were trying to make out why they should be variously knotted

and hung about in that way a man and woman went in and, after a brief

survey of the hooks, took down two of the napkins and carried them to a

table. We understood then. The bill of fare stated that napkins were

charged for at the rate of five centimes (one cent) each. These were

individual leaseholdings, as it were, of those who came regularly--a

fine example of French economy. We did not hang up our napkins when we

went away. We might not come back, and, besides, there were no empty

hooks.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] The old rates of exchange are used in this book.

Chapter II

MOTORING BY TRAM

A little book says: "Thanks to a unique system of tramways, Marseilles

may be visited rapidly and without fatigue." They do not know the word

"trolley" in Europe, and "tramway" is not a French word, but the French

have adopted it, even with its "w," a letter not in their alphabet. The

Marseilles trams did seem to run everywhere, and they were cheap. Ten

centimes (two cents) was the fare for each "zone" or division, and a

division long enough for the average passenger. Being sight-seers, we

generally paid more than once, but even so the aggregate was modest

enough. The circular trip around the Corniche, or shore, road has four

of these divisions, with a special rate for the trip, which is very long

and very beautiful.

We took the Corniche trip toward evening for the sake of the sunset. The

tram starts at the rue de Rome and winds through the city first, across

shaded courts, along streets of varying widths (some of them so old and

ever so foreign, but always clean), past beautiful public buildings

always with deep open spaces or broad streets in front of them, for the

French do not hide their fine public architectures and monuments, but

plant them as a landscape gardener plants his trellises and trees. Then

all at once we were at the shore--the Mediterranean no longer blue, but

crimson and gold with evening, the sun still drifting, as it seemed,

among the harbor islands--the towers of Chateau d'If outlined on the

sky. On one side the sea, breaking against the rocks and beaches,

washing into little sheltered bays--on the other the abrupt or terraced

cliff, with fair villas set in gardens of palm and mimosa and the rose

trees of the south. Here and there among the villas were palace-like

hotels, with wide balconies that overlooked the sea, and down along the

shore were tea houses and restaurants where one could sit at little

tables on pretty terraces just above the water's edge.

So we left the tram at the end of a zone and made our way down to one of

those places, and sat in a little garden and had fish, freshly caught,

and a cutlet, and some ripe grapes, and such things; and we watched the

sun set, and stayed until the dark came and the Corniche shore turned

into a necklace of twinkling lights. Then the tram carried us still

farther, and back into the city at last, by way of the Prado, a broad

residential avenue, with trees rising dark on either side.

At the end of a week in Marseilles we had learned a number of

things--made some observations--drawn some conclusions. It is a very old

city--old when the Greeks settled there twenty-five hundred years

ago--but it has been ravaged and rebuilt too often through the ages for

any of its original antiquity to remain. Some of the buildings have

stood five or six hundred years, perhaps, and are quaint and

interesting, with their queer roofs and moldering walls which have

known siege and battle and have seen men in gaudy trappings and armor go

clanking by, stopping to let their horses drink at the scarred fountains

where to-day women wash their vegetables and their clothing. We were

glad to have looked on those ancient relics, for they, too, would soon

be gone. The spirit of great building and progress is abroad in

Marseilles--the old clusters of houses will come down--the hoary

fountains worn smooth by the hands of women and the noses of thirsty

beasts will be replaced by new ones--fine and beautiful, for the French

build always for art, let the race for commercial supremacy be ever so

swift. Fifty or one hundred years from now it will be as hard to find

one of these landmarks as it is to-day relics of the Greek and Roman

times, and of the latter we found none at all. Tradition has it that

Lazarus and his family came to Marseilles after his resuscitation, but

the house he occupied is not shown. Indeed, there is probably not a

thing above ground that Lucian the Greek saw when he lived here in the

second century.

The harbor he sailed into remains. Its borders have changed, but it is

the same inclosed port that sheltered those early galleys and triremes

of commerce and of war. We looked down upon it from our balcony, and

sometimes in the dim morning, or in the first dusk of evening when its

sails were idle and its docks deserted, it seemed still to have

something of the past about it, something that was not quite reality.

Certain of its craft were old in fashion and quaint in form, and if even

one trireme had lain at anchor there, or had come drifting in, we might

easily have fancied this to be the port that somewhere is said to harbor

the missing ships.

It is a busy place by day. Its quays are full of trucks and trams and

teams, and a great traffic going on. Lucian would hardly recognize any

of it at all. The noise would appall him, the smoking steamers would

terrify him, the _transbordeur_--an aerial bridge suspended between two

Eiffel towers, with a hanging car that travels back and forth like a

cash railway--would set him praying to the gods. Possibly the fishwives,

sorting out sea food and bait under little awnings, might strike him as

more or less familiar. At least he would recognize their occupation.

They were strung along the east quay, and I had never dreamed that the

sea contained so many strange things to eat as they carried in stock.

They had oysters and clams, and several varieties of mussels, and some

things that looked like tide-worn lumps of terra cotta, and other things

that resembled nothing else under heaven, so that words have not been

invented to describe them.

Then they had _oursins_. I don't know whether an _oursin_ is a bivalve

or not. It does not look like one. The word "_oursin_" means hedgehog,

but this _oursin_ looked a great deal more like an old, black,

sea-soaked chestnut bur--that is, before they opened it. When the

_oursin_ is split open--

But I cannot describe an opened _oursin_ and preserve the proprieties.

It is too--physiological. And the Marseillais eat those things--eat them

raw! Narcissa and I, who had rather more limb and wind than the others,

wandered along the quay a good deal, and often stood spellbound watching

this performance. Once we saw two women having some of them for early

breakfast with a bottle of wine--fancy!

By the way, we finally discovered the restaurants in Marseilles. At

first we thought that the Marseillais never ate in public, but only

drank. This was premature. There are restaurant districts. The rue

Colbert is one of them. The quay is another, and of the restaurants in

that precinct there is one that no traveler should miss. It is Pascal's,

established a hundred years ago, and descended from father to son to the

present moment. Pascal's is famous for its fish, and especially for its

_bouillabaisse_. If I were to be in Marseilles only a brief time, I

might be willing to miss the Palais Longchamps or a cathedral or two,

but not Pascal's and _bouillabaisse_. It is a glorified fish chowder. I

will say no more than that, for I should only dull its bloom. I started

to write a poem on it. It began:

Oh, bouillabaisse, I sing thy praise.

But Narcissa said that the rhyme was bad, and I gave it up. Besides, I

remembered that Thackeray had written a poem on the same subject.

One must go early to get a seat at Pascal's. There are rooms and rooms,

and waiters hurrying about, and you must give your order, or point at

the bill of fare, without much delay. Sea food is the thing, and it

comes hot and delicious, and at the end you can have melon--from

paradise, I suppose, for it is pure nectar--a kind of liquid cantaloupe

such as I have seen nowhere else in this world.[2] You have wine if you

want it, at a franc a bottle, and when you are through you have spent

about half a dollar for everything and feel that life is a song and the

future made of peace. There came moments after we found Pascal's when,

like the lotus eaters, we felt moved to say: "We will roam no more. This

at last is the port where dreams come true."

Our motor clearance required a full ten days, but we did not regret the

time. We made some further trips by tram, and one by water--to Chateau

d'If, on the little ferry that runs every hour or so to that historic

island fortress. To many persons Chateau d'If is a semi-mythical island

prison from which, in Dumas' novel, Edmond Dantes escapes to become the

Count of Monte Cristo, with fabulous wealth and an avenging sword. But

it is real enough; a prison fortress which crowns a barren rock, twenty

minutes from the harbor entrance, in plain view from the Corniche road.

Francois I laid its corner stone in 1524 and construction continued

during the next seventy years. It is a place of grim, stubby towers,

with an inner court opening to the cells--two ranges of them, one above

the other. The furniture of the court is a stone stairway and a well.

Chateau d'If is about as solid and enduring as the rock it stands on,

and it is not the kind of place one would expect to go away from alive,

if he were invited there for permanent residence. There appears to be no

record of any escapes except that of Edmond Dantes, which is in a novel.

When prisoners left that island it was by consent of the authorities. I

am not saying that Dumas invented his story. In fact, I insist on

believing it. I am only saying that it was a remarkable exception to the

general habit of the guests in Chateau d'If. Of course it happened, for

we saw cell B where Dantes was confined, a rayless place; also cell A

adjoining, where the Abbe Faria was, and even the hole between, through

which the Abbe counseled Dantes and confided the secret of the treasure

that would make Dantes the master of the world. All of the cells have

tablets at their entrances bearing the names of their most notable

occupants, and that of Edmond Dantes is prominently displayed. It was

good enough evidence for us.

Those cells are on the lower level, and are merely black, damp holes,

without windows, and with no floors except the unleveled surface of the

rock. Prisoners were expected to die there and they generally did it

with little delay. One Bernadot, a rich Marseilles merchant, starved

himself, and so found release at the end of the twelfth day; but

another, a sailor named Jean Paul, survived in that horrible darkness

for thirty-one years. His crime was striking his commander. Many of the

offenses were even more trifling; the mere utterance of a word offensive

to some one in power was enough to secure lodging in Chateau d'If. It

was even dangerous to have a pretty daughter or wife that a person of

influence coveted. Chateau d'If had an open door for husbands and

fathers not inclined to be reasonable in such matters.

The second-story prisons are larger and lighter, but hardly less

interesting. In No. 5 Count Mirabeau lodged for nearly a year, by

suggestion of his father, who did not approve of his son's wild ways and

thought Chateau d'If would tame him. But Mirabeau put in his time

writing an essay on despotism and planning revolution. Later, one of the

neighboring apartments, No. 7, a large one, became the seat of the

_tribunal revolutionnaire_ which condemned there sixty-six to the

guillotine.

Many notables were sent to Chateau d'If on the charge of disloyalty to

the sovereign. In one of the larger cells two brothers were imprisoned

for having shared the exile of one Chevalier Glendeves who was obliged

to flee from France because he refused to go down on his knees to Louis

XIV. Royalty itself has enjoyed the hospitality of Chateau d'If. Louis

Philippe of Orleans occupied the same large apartment later, which is

really quite a grand one for a prison, with a fireplace and space to

move about. Another commodious room on this floor was for a time the

home of the mysterious Man of the Iron Mask.

These are but a few--one can only touch on the more interesting names.

"Dead after ten years of captivity"; "Dead after sixteen years of

captivity"; such memoranda close many of the records. Some of the

prisoners were released at last, racked with disease and enfeebled in

mind. Some went forth to the block, perhaps willingly enough. It is not

a place in which one wishes to linger. You walk a little way into the

blackest of the dungeons, stumbling over the rocks of the damp,

unleveled floor, and hurry out. You hesitate a moment in the larger,

lighter cells and try to picture a king there, and the Iron Mask; you

try to imagine the weird figure of Mirabeau raging and writing, and

then, a step away, the grim tribunal sorting from the nobility of France

material for the guillotine. It is the kind of thing you cannot make

seem real. You can see a picture, but it is always away somewhere--never

quite there, in the very place.

Outside it was sunny, the sea blue, the cliffs high and sharp, with

water always breaking and foaming at their feet. The Joy insisted on

being shown the exact place where Dantes was flung over, but I was

afraid to try to find it. I was afraid that there would be no place

where he could be flung into the water without hitting the sharp rocks

below, and that would end the story before he got the treasure. I said

it was probably on the other side of the island, and besides it was

getting late. We sailed home in the evening light, this time into the

ancient harbor, and landed about where Lucian used to land, I should

think, such a long time ago.

It was our last night in Marseilles. We had been there a full ten days,

altogether, and time had not hung upon our hands. We would still have

lingered, but there was no longer an excuse. Even the car could not

furnish one. Released from its prison, refreshed with a few liters of

gasoline--_essence_, they call it--and awakened with a gentle hitch or

two of the crank, it began its sweet old murmur, just as if it had not

been across some thousands of miles of tossing water. Then, the clutch

released, it slipped noiselessly out of the docks, through the narrow

streets, to a garage, where it acquired its new numbers and a bath, and

maybe a French lesson or two, so that to-morrow it might carry us

farther into France.

FOOTNOTES:

[2] Our honey-dew melon is a mild approach to it.

Chapter III

ACROSS THE CRAU

There are at least two ways to leave Marseilles for the open plain of

the Provence, and we had hardly started before I wished I had chosen the

other one. We were climbing the rue de la Republique, or one of its

connections, when we met, coming down on the wrong side of the tram

line, one of the heaviest vehicles in France, loaded with iron castings.

It was a fairly crowded street, too, and I hesitated a moment too long

in deciding to switch to the wrong side, myself, and so sneak around the

obstruction. In that moment the monstrous thing decided to cross to its

own side of the road, which seemed to solve the problem. I brought the

car to a standstill to wait.

But that was another mistake; I should have backed. The obstruction

refused to cross the tram track. Evidently the rails were slippery and

when the enormous wheels met the iron they slipped--slipped toward

us--ponderously, slowly, as inevitable as doomsday. I was willing to

back then, but when I shifted the lever I forgot something else and our

engine stopped. There was not enough gravity to carry us back without

it; neither was there room, or time, to crank.[3] So there we were,

with that mountain closing in upon us like a wall of Poe's collapsing

room.

It was fascinating. I don't think one of us thought of jumping out and

leaving the car to its fate. The truck driver was frantically urging his

team forward, hoping the wheels would catch, but only making them slide

a little quicker in our direction. They were six inches away, now--five

inches--three inches--one inch--the end of the hub was touching our mud

guard. What we _might_ have done then--what _might_ have happened

remains guesswork. What did happen was that the huge steel tire reached

a joint in the tram rail and unhurriedly lifted itself over, just as if

that was what it had been intending to do all the time. I had strength

enough left to get out and crank up, then, but none to spare. A little

more paint off the front end of the mud guard, but that was nothing. I

had whetted those guards on a variety of things, including a cow, in my

time. At home I had a real passion for scraping them against the door

casing of the garage, backing out.

Still, we were pretty thoughtful for several miles and missed a road

that turns off to Arles, and were on the way to Aix, which we had

already visited by tram. Never mind; Aix was on the way to Arles, too,

and when all the roads are good roads a few miles of motor travel more

or less do not count. Only it is such a dusty way to Aix, and we were

anxious to get into the cleaner and more inviting byways.

We were at the outskirts, presently, and when we saw a military-looking

gentleman standing before a little house marked "_L'Octroi_" we stopped.

I had learned enough French to know that _l'octroi_ means a local

custom house, and it is not considered good form to pass one of them

unnoticed. It hurts the _l'octroi_ man's feelings and he is backed by

the _gendarmerie_ of France. He will let you pass, and then in his

sorrow he will telephone to the police station, just ahead. There you

will be stopped with a bayonet, or a club, or something, and brought

back to the _l'octroi_, where you will pay an _amend_ of six francs;

also costs; also for the revenue stamp attached to your bill of

particulars; also for any little thing which you may happen to have upon

which duty may be levied; also for other things; and you will stand

facing a half-open cell at the end of the corridor while your account is

being made up--all of which things happened to a friend of mine who

thought that because an _octroi_ man looked sleepy he was partly dead.

Being warned in this way, we said we would stop for an _octroi_ man even

if he were entirely dead; so we pulled up and nodded politely, and

smiled, and said, "Bon joor, messoor," and waited his pleasure.

You never saw a politer man. He made a sweeping salute and said--well,

it doesn't matter just what he said--I took it to be complimentary and

Narcissa thought it was something about vegetables. Whatever it was, we

all smiled again, while he merely glanced in the car fore and aft, gave

another fine salute and said, "_Allay_" whereupon we understood, and

_allayed_, with counter-salutes and further smiles--all of which seemed

pleasanter than to be brought back by a _gendarme_ and stood up in front

of a cell during the reckoning process.

Inquiring in Aix for the road to Arles we made a discovery, to wit: they

do not always pronounce it "Arl" in the French way, but "Arlah," which

is Provencal, I suppose, the remains of the old name "Arlate." One young

man did not seem even to recognize the name Arles, though curiously it

happened that he spoke English--enough, at least, to direct us when he

found that it was his Provencal "Arlah" that we wanted.

So we left Aix behind us, and with it the dust, the trams, and about the

last traces of those modern innovations which make life so comfortable

when you need them and so unpeaceful when you prefer something else. The

one great modern innovation which bore us silently along those level

roads fell into the cosmic rhythm without a jar--becoming, as it seemed,

a sort of superhuman activity, such as we shall know, perhaps, when we

get our lost wings again.

I don't know whether Provence roads are modern or not. I suspect they

were begun by the Roman armies a good while ago; but in any case they

are not neglected now. They are boulevards--no, not exactly that, for

the word "boulevard" suggests great width. They are avenues, then, ample

as to width, and smooth and hard, and planted on both sides with exactly

spaced and carefully kept trees. Leaving Aix, we entered one of these

highways running straight into the open country. Naturally we did not

expect it to continue far, not in that perfectly ordered fashion, but

when with mile after mile it varied only to become more beautiful, we

were filled with wonder. The country was not thickly settled; the road

was sparsely traveled. Now and then we passed a heavy team drawing a

load of hay or grain or wine barrels, and occasionally, very

occasionally, we saw an automobile.

It was a fair, fertile land at first. There were rich, sloping fields,

vineyards, olive gardens, and plumy poplars; also, an occasional stone

farmhouse that looked ancient and mossy and picturesque, and made us

wish we could know something of the life inside its heavy walls. We said

that sometime we would stop at such a place and ask them to take us in

for the night.

Now and then we passed through a village, where the streets became

narrow and winding, and were not specially clean. They were interesting

places enough, for they were old and queer, but they did not invite us

to linger. They were neither older nor more queer than corners of

Marseilles we had seen. Once we saw a kind of fair going on and the

people in holiday dress.

At Salon, a still larger and cleaner place, we stopped to buy something

for our wayside luncheon. Near the corner of a little shaded square a

man was selling those delectable melons such as we had eaten in

Marseilles; at a shop across the way was a window full of

attractions--little cheeses, preserved meats, and the like. I gathered

up an assortment, then went into a _boulangerie_ for bread. There was

another customer ahead of me, and I learned something, watching his

transaction. Bread, it seemed, was not sold by the loaf there, but by

exact weight. The man said some words and the woman who waited on him

laid two loaves, each about a yard long, on the scales. Evidently they

exceeded his order, for she cut off a foot or so from one loaf. Still

the weight was too much, and she cut off a slice. He took what was left,

laid down his money, and walked out. I had a feeling that the end and

slice would lie around and get shopworn if I did not take them. I

pointed at them, and she put them on the scales. Then I laid down a

franc, and she gave me half a gill of copper change. It made the family

envious when they saw how exactly I had transacted my purchase. There is

nothing like knowing the language. We pushed on into the country again,

stopped in a shady, green place, and picnicked on those good things for

which we had spent nearly four francs. There were some things left over,

too; we could have done without the extra slice of bread.

There were always mountains in view, but where we were the land had

become a level plain, once, ages ago, washed by the sea. We realized

this when the fertile expanse became, little by little, a barren--a mere

waste, at length, of flat smooth stones like cobble, a floor left by the

departing tides. "La Crau" it is called, and here there were no homes.

No harvest could grow in that land--nothing but a little tough grass,

and the artificially set trees on either side of the perfectly smooth,

perfectly straight road that kept on and on, mile after mile, until it

seemed that it must be a band around the world. How can they afford to

maintain such a road through that sterile land?

The sun was dropping to the western horizon, but we did not hurry. I set

the throttle to a point where the speedometer registered fifteen miles

an hour. So level was the road that the figures on the dial seemed fixed

there. There was nothing to see but the unbroken barren, the perfectly

regular rows of sycamore or cypress, and the evening sky; yet I have

seldom known a drive more inspiring. Steadily, unvaryingly, and silently

heading straight into the sunset, we seemed somehow a part of the

planetary system, little brother to the stars.

It was dusk when we reached the outskirts of Arles and stopped to light

the lamps. The wide street led us into the business region, and we hoped

it might carry us to the hotels. But this was too much to expect in an

old French, Provencal, Roman city. Pausing, we pronounced the word

"hotel," and were directed toward narrower and darker ways. We had

entered one of these when a man stepped out of the shadow and took

charge of us. I concluded that we were arrested then, and probably would

not need a hotel. But he also said "hotel," and, stepping on the

running-board, pointed, while I steered, under his direction. I have no

idea as to the way we went, but we came out into a semi-lighted square

directly in front of a most friendly-looking hostelry. Then I went in

and aired some of my phonograph French, inquiring about rooms on the

different _etages_ and the cost of _diners_ and _dejeuners_, and the

landlady spoke so slowly and distinctly that it made one vain of his

understanding.

So we unloaded, and our guide, who seemed to be an _attache_ of the

place, directed me to the garage. I gathered from some of the sounds he

made that the main garage was _complet_--that is to say, full--and we

were going to an annex. It was an interesting excursion, but I should

have preferred to make it on foot and by daylight. We crossed the square

and entered a cobbled street--no, a passage--between ancient walls, lost

in the blackness above, and so close together below that I hesitated. It

was a place for armored men on horseback, not for automobiles. We crept

slowly through and then we came to an uphill corner that I was sure no

car without a hinge in the middle could turn. But my guard--guide, I

mean, signified that it could be done, and inch by inch we crawled

through. The annex--it was really a stable of the Middle Ages--was at

the end of the tunnel, and when we came away and left the car there I

was persuaded that I should never see it again.

Back at the hotel, however, it was cheerful enough. It seemed an ancient

place of stone stairways and thick walls. Here and there in niches were

Roman vases and fragments found during the excavations. Somewhere

underneath us were said to be catacombs. Attractive things, all of them,

but the dinner we had--hot, fine and French, with _vin compris_ two

colors--was even more attractive to travelers who had been drinking in

oxygen under the wide sky all those steady miles across the Crau.

FOOTNOTES:

[3] The reader is reminded that this was in a day when few cars cranked

otherwise than by hand.

Chapter IV

MISTRAL

(From my notes, September 10, 1913)

Adjoining our hotel--almost a part of it, in fact, is a remnant of the

ancient Roman forum of Arles. Some columns, a piece of the heavy wall,

sections of lintel, pediment, and cornice still stand. It is a portion

of the Corinthian entrance to what was the superb assembly place of

Roman Arles. The square is called Place du Forum, and sometimes now

Place Mistral--the latter name because a bronze statue of the "Homer of

the Provence" has been erected there, just across from the forum

entrance.

Frederic Mistral, still alive at eighty-three, is the light of the

modern Provence.[4] We had begun to realize something of this when we

saw his photographs and various editions of his poems in the windows of

Marseilles and Aix, and handbills announcing the celebration at St. Remy

of the fiftieth anniversary of Gounod's score of Mistral's great poem,

"Mireille." But we did not at all realize the fullness of the Provencal

reverence for "the Master," as they call him, until we reached Arles. To

the Provence Mistral is a god--an Apollo--the "central sun from which

other Provencal singers are as diverging rays." Whatever Mistral

touches is glorified. Provencal women talk with a new grace because

Mistral has sung of them. Green slopes and mossy ruins are viewed

through the light of Mistral's song. A Mistral anniversary is celebrated

like a Declaration of Independence or a Louisiana Purchase. They have

even named a wind after him. Or perhaps he was named after the wind.

Whichever way it was, the wind has taken second place and the people

smile tenderly now, remembering the Master, when its name is mentioned.

I believe Mistral does not sing in these later days. He does not need

to. The songs he sang in youth go on singing for him, and are always

young. Outside of France they are not widely known; their bloom and

fragrance shrink under translation. George Meredith, writing to Janet

Ross in 1861, said: "Mistral I have read. He is really a fine poet." But

to Meredith the euphonies of France were not strange.

And Mistral has loved the Provence. Not only has he sung of it, but he

has given his labor and substance to preserve its memories. When the

Academy voted him an award of three thousand francs he devoted it to the

needs of his fellow poets;[5] when he was awarded the Nobel prize he

forgot that he might spend it on himself, and bought and restored an old

palace, and converted it into a museum for Arles. Then he devoted his

time and energies to collecting Provencal relics, and to-day, with its

treasures and associations, the place has become a shrine. Everything

relating to the life and traditions of the Provence is there--Roman

sculpture, sarcophagi, ceramics, frescoes, furnishings, implements--the

place is crowded with precious things. Lately a room of honor has been

devoted to the poet himself. In it are cases filled with his personal

treasures; the walls are hung with illustrations used in his books. On

the mantel is a fine bust of the poet, and in a handsome reliquary one

finds a lock of hair, a little dress, and the cradle of the infant

Mistral. In the cradle lies the manuscript of Mistral's first and

greatest work, the "Mireille." The Provence has produced other noted

men--among them Alphonse Daudet, who was born just over at Nimes, and

celebrated the town of Tarascon with his Tartarin. But Daudet went to

Paris, which is, perhaps, a sin. The Provence is proud of Daudet, and

he, too, has a statue, at Nimes; but the Provence worships Mistral.

FOOTNOTES:

[4] Written in 1913. Mistral died March 24th of the following year.

[5] Daudet in his _Lettres de Mon Moulin_ says:

"_II y a quatre ans, lorsque l'Academie donna a l'auteur de 'Mireille'

le prix de trois mille francs. Mme. Mistral [sa mere] eut une idee._

"'_Si nous faisons tapisser et plafonner ta chambre?' dit elle a son

fils._

"'_Non! non!' repondit Mistral. 'Ca c'est l'argent des poetes, on n'y

touche pas._'"

Chapter V

THE ROME OF FRANCE

There is no record of a time when there was not a city at Arles. The

Rhone divides to form its delta there--loses its swiftness and becomes a

smooth highway to the sea.

"As at Arles, where the Rhone stagnates," wrote Dante, who probably

visited the place on a journey he made to Paris. There the flat

barrenness of the Crau becomes fertile slopes and watered fields. It is

a place for men to congregate and it was already important when Julius

Caesar established a Roman colony and built a fleet there, after which it

became still more important--finally, with its one hundred thousand

inhabitants, rivaling even Marseilles. It was during those earlier

years--along through the first and second centuries--that most of the

great building was done, remnants of which survive to this day.

Prosperity continued even into the fourth century, when the Christian

Emperor Constantine established a noble palace there and contemplated

making it the capital of his kingdom.

But then the decline set in. In the next century or two clouds of

so-called barbarians swept down from the north and east, conquering,

plundering, and establishing new kingdoms. Gauls, Goths, Saracens, and

Francs each had their turn at it.

Following came the parlous years of the middle period. For a brief time

it was an independent republic; then a monarchy. By the end of the

fifteenth century it was ready to be annexed to France. Always a battle

ground, raided and sacked so often that the count is lost, the wonder is

that any of its ancient glories survive at all. But the Romans built

well; their massive construction has withstood the wild ravage of

succeeding wars, the sun and storm of millennial years.

We knew little of Arles except that it was the place where there was the

ruin of a Roman arena, and we expected not much from that. The Romans

had occupied France and had doubtless built amusement places, but if we

gave the matter any further thought it was to conclude that such

provincial circus rings would be small affairs of which only a few

vestiges, like those of the ruined Forum, would remain. We would visit

the fragments, of course, and meantime we drifted along one side of the

Place du Forum in the morning sunlight, looking in show windows to find

something in picture postals to send home.

What we saw at first puzzled, then astonished us. Besides the pictures

of Mistral the cards were mostly of ruins--which we expected, perhaps,

but not of such ruins. Why, these were not mere vestiges. Ephesus,

Baalbec, Rome itself, could hardly show more impressive remains. The

arena on these cards seemed hardly a ruin at all, and here were other

cards which showed it occupied, filled with a vast modern audience who

were watching something--clearly a bull fight, a legitimate descendant

of Nero's Rome. I could not at first believe that these structures

could be of Arles, but the inscriptions were not to be disputed. Then I

could not wait to get to them.

We did not drive. It was only a little way to the arena, they told us,

and the narrow streets looked crooked and congested. It was a hot

September morning, but I think we hurried. I suppose I was afraid the

arena would not wait. Then all at once we were right upon it, had

entered a lofty arch, climbed some stairs, and were gazing down on one

of the surviving glories of a dead empire.

What a structure it is! An oval 448 by 352 feet--more than half as big

again as a city block; the inner oval, the arena itself,[6] 226 by 129

feet, the tiers of stone seats rising terrace above terrace to a high

circle of arches which once formed the support for an enormous canvas

dome.

All along the terraces arches and stairways lead down to spacious

recesses and the great entrance corridor. The twenty thousand spectators

which this arena once held were not obliged to crowd through any one or

two entrances, but could enter almost anywhere and ascend to their seats

from any point of the compass. They held tickets--pieces of parchment, I

suppose--and these were numbered like the seats, just as tickets are

numbered to-day.

Down near the ringside was the pit, or _podium_, and that was the choice

place. Some of the seats there were owned, and bore the owners' names.

The upper seats are wide stone steps, but comfortable enough, and solid

enough to stand till judgment day. They have ranged wooden benches along

some of them now, I do not see why, for they are very ugly and certainly

not luxurious. They are for the entertainments--mainly bull fights--of

the present; for strange, almost unbelievable as it seems, the old arena

has become no mere landmark, a tradition, a monument of barbaric tastes

and morals, but continues in active service to-day, its purpose the

same, its morals not largely improved.

It was built about the end of the first century, and in the beginning

stags and wild boars were chased and put to death there. But then Roman

taste improved. These were tame affairs, after all. So the arena became

a prize ring in which the combatants handled one another without

gloves--that is to say, with short swords--and were hacked into a mince

instead of mauled into a pulp in our more refined modern way. To vary

the games lions and tigers were imported and matched against the

gladiators, with pleasing effect. Public taste went on improving and

demanding fresh novelties. Rome was engaged just then in exterminating

Christians, and the happy thought occurred to make spectacles of them by

having them fight the gladiators and the wild beasts, thus combining

business and pleasure in a manner which would seem to have been highly

satisfactory to the public who thronged the seats and applauded and

laughed, and had refreshments served, and said what a great thing

Christianity was and how they hoped its converts would increase.

Sometimes, when the captures were numerous and the managers could

afford it, Christians on crosses were planted around the entire arena,

covered with straw and pitch and converted into torches. These were

night exhibitions, when the torches would be more showy; and the canvas

dome was taken away so that the smoke and shrieks could go climbing to

the stars. Attractions like that would always jam an amphitheater. This

one at Arles has held twenty-five thousand on one of those special

occasions. Centuries later, when the Christians themselves came into

power, they showed a spirit of liberality which shines by contrast. They

burned their heretics in the public squares, free.

Only bulls and worn-out, cheap horses are tortured here to-day. It seems

a pretty tame sport after those great circuses of the past. But art is

long and taste is fleeting. Art will keep up with taste, and all that we

know of the latter is that it will change. Because to-day we are

satisfied with prize fights and bull fights is no sign that those who

follow us will not demand sword fights and wild beasts and living

torches. These old benches will last through the ages. They have always

been familiar with the sport of torture of one sort or another. They

await quite serenely for what the centuries may bring.

It was hard to leave the arena. One would like to remain and review its

long story. What did the barbarians do there--those hordes that swarmed

in and trampled Rome? The Saracens in the eighth century used it for a

fortress and added four watch towers, but their masonry is not of the

everlasting Roman kind, and one of their towers has tumbled down. It

would be no harm if the others would tumble, too. They lend to the place

that romance which always goes with the name "Saracen," but they add no

beauty.

We paid a franc admission when we came into the amphitheater, our

tickets being coupon affairs, admitting us to a variety of other

historic places. The proceeds from the ruins are devoted to their care

and preservation, but they cannot go far. Very likely the bull-fight

money is also used. That would be consistent.

We were directed to the Roman Theater, near at hand, where the ruin is

ruin indeed. A flight of rising stone seats, two graceful Corinthian

columns still standing, the rest fragments. More graceful in its

architecture than the arena, the theater yielded more readily to the

vandalisms of the conquerors and the corrosions of time. As early as the

third century it was partially pulled down. Later it was restored, but

not for long. The building bishops came and wanted its materials and

ornaments for their churches. Not much was left after that, but to-day

the fragments remaining have been unearthed and set up and give at least

a hint of its former glory. One wonders if those audiences who watched

Christian slaughter at the arena came also to this chaste spot. Plays

are sometimes given here to-day, I am told, classic reproductions, but

it is hard to believe that they would blend with this desolated setting.

The bull fight in the arena is even better.

We went over to the church of St. Trophime, which is not a ruin, though

very old. St. Trophime, a companion of St. Paul, was the founder of the

church of Arles. He is said to have set up a memorial to St. Etienne,

the first martyr, and on this consecrated spot three churches have been

built, one in the fourth century, another in the seventh, and this one,

dedicated to St. Trophime, in the twelfth, or earlier. It is of supreme

historical importance. By the faithful it is believed to contain the

remains of St. Trophime himself. Barbarossa and other great kings were

crowned here; every important ceremony of mediaeval Arles has been held

here.

It is one of the oldest-looking places I ever saw--so moldy, so crumbly,

and so dim. Though a thousand years older, the arena looks fresh as

compared with it, because even sun and storm do not gnaw and corrode

like gloom and dampness. But perhaps this is a softer stone. The

cloister gallery, which was not built until the twelfth century, is so

permeated with decay that one almost fears to touch its delicately

carved ornamentations lest they crumble in his hands. Mistral has

celebrated the cloister portal in a poem, and that alone would make it

sacred to the Provence. The beautiful gallery is built around a court

and it is lined with sculpture and bas-relief, rich beyond words. Saints

and bible scenes are the subjects, and how old, how time-eaten and

sorrowful they look. One gets the idea that the saints and martyrs and

prophets have all contracted some wasting malady which they cannot long

survive now. But one must not be flippant. It is a place where the feet

of faith went softly down the centuries; and, taken as a whole, St.

Trophime, with its graceful architecture--Gothic and Byzantine,

combined with the Roman fragments brought long ago from the despoiled

theater--is beautiful and delicate and tender, and there hangs about it

the atmosphere that comes of long centuries of quiet and sacred things.

Mistral's museum is just across from the church, but I have already

spoken of that--briefly, when it is worth a volume. One should be in a

patient mood for museums--either to see or to write of them--a mood that

somehow does not go with automobile wandering, however deliberate. But I

must give a word at least to two other such institutions of Arles, the

Musee Lapidaire, a magnificent collection of pagan and early Christian

sarcophagi and marble, mostly from the ancient burial field, the

Aliscamp--and the Musee Reattu.

Reattu was an Arlesian painter of note who produced many pictures and

collected many beautiful things. His collections have been acquired by

the city of Arles, and installed in one of its most picturesque old

buildings--the ancient Grand Priory of the Knights of Malta. The

stairway is hung with tapestries and priceless arras; the rooms are

filled with paintings, bas-reliefs, medallions, marbles, armor,--a

wealth of art objects. One finds it hard to believe that such museums

can be owned and supported by this little city--ancient, half forgotten,

stranded here on the banks of the Rhone. Its population is given as

thirty thousand, and it makes sausages--very good ones--and there are

some railway shops that employ as many as fifteen hundred men. Some

boat building may still be done here, too. But this is about all Arles

can claim in the way of industries. It has not the look of what we call

to-day a thriving city. It seems, rather, a mediaeval setting for the

more ancient memories. Yet it has these three splendid museums, and it

has preserved and restored its ruins, just as if it had a J. Pierpont

Morgan behind it, instead of an old poet with a Nobel prize, and a

determined little community, too proud of its traditions and its taste

to let them die. Danbury, Connecticut, has as many inhabitants as Arles,

and it makes about all the hats that are worn in America. It is a busy,

rich place, where nearly everybody owns an automobile, if one may judge

by the street exhibit any pleasant afternoon. It is an old place, too,

for America, with plenty of landmarks and traditions. But I somehow

can't imagine Danbury spending the money and the time to establish such

superb institutions as these, or to preserve its prerevolutionary

houses. But, after all, Danbury is young. It will preserve something two

thousand years hence--probably those latest Greco-Roman facades which it

is building now.

Near to the Reattu Museum is the palace of the Christian Emperor

Constantine. Constantine came here after his father died, and fell in

love with the beauty and retirement of the place. Here, on the banks of

the Rhone, he built a palace, and dreamed of passing his days in it--of

making Arles the capital of his empire. His mother, St. Helene, whose

dreams at Jerusalem located the Holy Sepulcher, the True Cross, and

other needed relics, came to visit her son, and while here witnessed

the treason and suicide of one Maximus Hercules, persecutor of the

Christians. That was early in the fourth century. The daughter of

Maximus seems to have been converted, for she came to stay at the palace

and in due time bore Constantine a son. Descendants of Constantine

occupied the palace for a period, then it passed to the Gauls, to the

Goths, and so down the invading and conquering line. Once a king, Euric

III, was assassinated here. Other kings followed and several varieties

of counts. Their reigns were usually short and likely to end with a good

deal of suddenness. It was always a good place for royalty to live and

die. Until the beginning of the nineteenth century it was known as the

"House of the King," but it was a ruin by that time. Only portions of it

remain now, chiefly a sort of rotunda of the grand hall of state. Very

little is left to show the ancient richness of its walls, but one may

invite himself to imagine something--its marbles and its hangings--also

that it was just here that M. Hercules and King Euric and their kind

went the violent way; it would be the dramatic place for those

occasions.

One may not know to-day just what space the palace originally covered,

but it was very large. Portions of its walls appear in adjoining

buildings. Excavations have brought to light marbles, baths, rich

ornamentations, all attesting its former grandeur. Arles preserves it

for its memories, and in pride of the time when she came so near to

being the capital of the world.

FOOTNOTES:

[6] The word arena derives its name from the sand, strewn to absorb the

blood.

Chapter VI

THE WAY THROUGH EDEN

There is so much to see at Arles. One would like to linger a week, then

a month, then very likely he would not care to go at all. The past would

get hold of him by that time--the glamour that hangs about the dead

centuries.

There had been rain in the night when we left Arles, much needed, for it

was the season of drought. It was mid-morning and the roads were hard

and perfect, and led us along sparkling waysides and between refreshed

vineyards, and gardens, and olive groves. It seemed a good deal like

traveling through Eden, and I don't suppose heaven--the automobilist's

heaven (assuming that there is one)--is much better.

I wish I could do justice to the Midi, but even Mistral could not do

that. It is the most fruitful, luscious land one can imagine. Everything

there seems good to eat, to smell of--to devour in some way. The vines

were loaded with purple and topaz grapes, and I was dying to steal some,

though for a few francs we had bought a basket of clusters, with other

luncheon supplies, in Arles. It finally became necessary to stop and eat

these things--those grape fields were too tempting.

It is my opinion that nothing in the world is more enjoyable than an

automobile roadside luncheon. One does not need to lug a heavy basket

mile after mile until a suitable place is found, and compromise at last

because the flesh rebels. With a car, a mile, two miles, five miles, are

matters of a few minutes. You run along leisurely until you reach the

brook, the shade, the seclusion that invites you. Then you are fresh and

cool and deliberate. No need to hurry because of the long tug home

again. You enjoy the things you have brought, unfretted by fatigue,

undismayed by the prospect ahead. You are in no hurry to go. You linger

and smoke and laze a little and discuss the environment--the fields, the

growing things, the people through whose lands and lives you are cutting

a cross-section, as it seems. You wonder about their customs, their

diversions, what they do in winter, how it is in their homes. You

speculate on their history, on what the land was like in its primeval

period before there were any fields and homes--civilized homes--there at

all. Perhaps--though this is unlikely--you _know_ a little about these

things. It is no advantage; your speculations are just as valuable and

more picturesque. There are many pleasant things about motor gypsying,

but our party, at least, agreed that the wayside luncheon is the

pleasantest of all.

Furthermore, it is economical. Unless one wants hot dishes, you can get

more things, and more delicious things, in the village shops or along

the way than you can find at the wayside hotel or restaurant, and for

half the amount. Our luncheon that day--we ate it between Arles and

Tarascon--consisted of tinned chicken, fresh bread with sweet butter,

Roquefort cheese, ripe grapes, and some French cakes--plenty, and all of

the best, at a cost of about sixty cents for our party of four. And when

we were finally ready to go, and had cleaned up and secreted every

particle of paper or other refuse (for the true motorist never leaves a

place unsightly) we felt quite as pleased with ourselves and the world,

and the things of the infinite, as if we had paid two or three times as

much for a meal within four walls.

Chapter VII

TO TARASCON AND BEAUCAIRE

It is no great distance from Arles to Tarascon, and, leisurely as we

travel, we had reached the home of Tartarin in a little while. We were

tempted to stop over at Tarascon, for the name had that inviting sound

which always belongs to the localities of pure romance--that is to say,

fiction--and it has come about that Tarascon belongs more to Daudet than

to history, while right across the river is Beaucaire, whose name, at

least, Booth Tarkington has pre-empted for one of his earliest heroes.

After all, it takes an author to make a town really celebrated.

Thousands of Americans who have scarcely heard the name of Arles are

intimately familiar with that of Tarascon. Of course the town has to

contribute something. It must either be a place where something has

happened, or _could_ happen, or it must have a name with a fine sound,

and it should be located in about the right quarter of the globe. When

such a place catches the fancy of an author who has the gift of making

the ideal seem reality, he has but to say the magic words and the fame

of that place is sure.

Not that Tarascon has not had real history and romance; it has had

plenty of both. Five hundred years ago the "Good King Rene" of Anjou,

who was a painter and a writer, as well as a king, came to Tarascon to

spend his last days in the stern, perpendicular castle which had been

built for him on the banks of the Rhone. It is used as a jail now, but

King Rene held a joyous court there and a web of romance clings to his

memory. King Rene's castle does not look like a place for romance. It

looks like an artificial precipice. We were told we could visit it by

making a sufficiently polite application to the _Mairie_, but it did not

seem worth while. In the first place, I did not know how to make a

polite application to visit a jail--not in French--and then it was

better to imagine King Rene's festivities than to look upon a reality of

misfortune.

The very name of Tarascon has to do with story. Far back, in the dim

traditionary days, one St. Martha delivered the place from a very evil

dragon, the Tarasque, for whom they showed their respect by giving his

name to their town.

Beaucaire, across the river, is lighted by old tradition, too. It was

the home of Aucassin and Nicollette, for one thing, and anyone who has

read that poem, either in the original or in Andrew Lang's exquisite

translation, will have lived, for a moment at least, in the tender light

of legendary tale.

We drove over to Beaucaire, and Narcissa and I scaled a garden terrace

to some ruined towers and battlements, all that is left of the ancient

seat of the Montmorencys. It is a romantic ruin from a romantic day. It

was built back in the twelve hundreds--when there were still knights and

troubadours, and the former jousted at a great fair which was held

there, and the latter reclined on the palace steps, surrounded by ladies

and gallants in silken array, and sang songs of Palestine and the

Crusades. As time went on a light tissue of legend was woven around the

castle itself--half-mythical tales of its earlier centuries. Figures

like Aucassin and Nicollette emerged and were made so real by those who

chanted or recited the marvel of their adventures, that they still live

and breathe with youth when their gallant castle itself is no more than

vacant towers and fragmentary walls. The castle of Beaucaire looks

across to the defiant walls of King Rene's castle in Tarascon and I

believe there used to be some sturdy wars between them. If not, I shall

construct one some day, when I am less busy, and feeling in the romantic

form. It will be as good history as most castle history, and I think I

shall make Beaucaire win. King Rene was a good soul, but I am doubtful

about those who followed him, and his castle, so suitable to-day for a

jail, does not invite sympathy. The Montmorency castle was dismantled in

1632, according to the guidebook, by Richelieu, who beheaded its last

tenant--some say with a cleaver, a serviceable utensil for such work.

Beaucaire itself is not a pretty town--not a clean town. I believe

Nicollette was shut up for a time in one of its houses--we did not

inquire which one--any of them would be bad enough to-day.

[Illustration: "WHERE ROADS BRANCH OR CROSS THERE ARE SIGNBOARDS.... YOU

CAN'T ASK A MAN 'QUEL EST LE CHEMIN' FOR ANYWHERE WHEN YOU ARE IN FRONT

OF A SIGNBOARD WHICH IS SHOUTING THE INFORMATION"]

It is altogether easy to keep to the road in France. You do not wind in

and out with unmarked routes crossing and branching at every turn. You

travel a hard, level way, often as straight as a ruling stick and

pointed in the right direction. Where roads branch, or cross, there are

signboards. All the national roads are numbered, and your red-book map

shows these numbers--the chances of mistake being thus further lessened.

We had practiced a good deal at asking in the politest possible French

the way to any elusive destination. The book said that in France one

generally takes off his hat in making such an inquiry, so I practiced

that until I got it to seem almost inoffensive, not to say jaunty, and

the formula "_Je vous demande pardon, but--quel est le chemin pour--_"

whatever the place was. Sometimes I could even do it without putting in

the "but," and was proud, and anxious to show it off at any opportunity.

But it got dusty with disuse. You can't ask a man "_quel est le chemin_"

for anywhere when you are on the straight road going there, or in front

of a signboard which is shouting the information. I only got to unload

that sentence twice between Arles and Avignon, and once I forgot to take

off my hat; when I did, the man didn't understand me.

With the blue mountains traveling always at our right, with level garden

and vineland about us, we drifted up the valley of the Rhone and found

ourselves, in mid-afternoon, at the gates of Avignon. That is not merely

a poetic figure. Avignon has veritable gates--and towering crenelated

walls with ramparts, all about as perfect as when they were built,

nearly six hundred years ago.

We had heard Avignon called the finest existing specimen of a mediaeval

walled city, but somehow one does not realize such things from hearing

the mere words. We stopped the car to stare up at this overtopping

masonry, trying to believe that it had been standing there already three

hundred years, looking just about as it looks to-day, when Shakespeare

was writing plays in London. Those are the things we never really

believe. We only acknowledge them and pass on.

Very little of Avignon has overflowed its massive boundaries; the fields

were at our backs as we halted in the great portals. We halted because

we noticed the word "_L'Octroi_" on one of the towers. But, as before,

the _l'octroi_ man merely glanced into our vehicle and waved us away.

We were looking down a wide shaded avenue of rather modern, even if

foreign, aspect, and full of life. We drove slowly, hunting, as we

passed along, for one of the hotels set down in the red-book as

"comfortable, with modern improvements," including "gar. _grat._"--that

is to say, garage gratis, such being the custom of this land.

Narcissa, who has an eye for hotels, spied one presently, a rather

imposing-looking place with a long, imposing name. But the management

was quite modest as to terms when I displayed our T. C. de France

membership card, and the "gar. _grat._"--this time in the inner court of

the hotel itself--was a neat place with running water and a concrete

floor. Not very ancient for mediaeval Avignon, but one can worry along

without antiquities in a hotel.

Chapter VIII

GLIMPSES OF THE PAST

Avignon, like Arles, was colonized by the Romans, but the only remains

of that time are now in its museum. At Arles the Romans did great

things; its heyday was the period of their occupation. Conditions were

different at Avignon. Avenio, as they called it, seems to have been a

kind of outpost, walled and fortified, but not especially glorified.

Very little was going on at Avenio. Christians were seldom burned there.

In time a Roman emperor came to Arles, and its people boasted that it

was to become the Roman capital. Nothing like that came to Avenio; it

would require another thousand years and another Roman occupation to

mature its grand destiny.

I do not know just how it worried along during those stormy centuries of

waiting, but with plenty of variety, no doubt. I suppose barbarians came

like summer leafage, conquered and colonized, mixing the blood of a new

race. It became a republic about twelve hundred and something--small,

but tough and warlike--commanding the respect of seigneurs and counts,

even of kings. Christianity, meantime, had prospered. Avignon had

contributed to the Crusades and built churches. Also, a cathedral,

though little dreaming that in its sacristy would one day lie the body

of a pope.

Avignon's day, however, was even then at hand. Sedition was rife in

Italy and the popes, driven from Rome, sought refuge in France. Near

Avignon was a small papal dominion of which Carpentras was the capital,

and the pope, then Clement V, came often to Avignon. This was honor, but

when one day the Bishop of Avignon was made Pope John XXII, and

established his seat in his own home, the little city became suddenly

what Arles had only hoped to be--the capital of the world.

If one were permitted American parlance at this point, he would say that

a boom now set in in Avignon.[7] Everybody was gay, everybody busy,

everybody prosperous. The new pope straightway began to enlarge and

embellish his palace, and the community generally followed suit. During

the next sixty or seventy years about everything that is to-day of

importance was built or rebuilt. New churches were erected, old ones

restored. The ancient Roman wall was replaced by the splendid new one.

The papal palace was enlarged and strengthened until it became a mighty

fortress--one of the grandest structures in Europe. The popes went back

to Rome, then, but their legates remained and from their strong citadel

administered the affairs of that district for four turbulent centuries.

In 1791, Avignon united her fortunes to those of France, and through

revolution and bloodshed has come again to freedom and prosperity and

peace. I do not know what the population of Avignon was in the day of

her greater glory. To-day it is about fifty thousand, and, as it is full

to the edges, it was probably not more populous then.

We did not hurry in Avignon. We only loitered about the streets a little

the first afternoon, practicing our French on the sellers of postal

cards. It was a good place for such practice. If there was a soul in

Avignon besides ourselves with a knowledge of English he failed to make

himself known. Not even in our hotel was there a manager, porter, or

waiter who could muster an English word.

Narcissa and I explored more than the others and discovered the City

Hall and a theater and a little open square with a big monument. We also

got a distant glimpse of some great towering walls which we knew to be

the Palace of the Popes.

Now and again we were assailed by beggars--soiled and persistent small

boys who annoyed us a good deal until we concocted an impromptu cure. It

was a poem, in French--and effective:

_Allez! Allez!_

_Je n'ai pas de monnaie!_

_Allez! Allez!_

_Je n'ai pas de l'argent!_

A Frenchman might not have had the courage to mortify his language like

that, but we had, and when we marched to that defiant refrain the

attacking party fell back.

We left the thoroughfare and wandered down into narrow side streets,

cobble-paved and winding, between high, age-stained walls--streets and

walls that have surely not been renewed since the great period when the

coming of the popes rebuilt Avignon. So many of the houses are

apparently of one age and antiquity they might all have sprung up on the

same day. What a bustle and building there must have been in those first

years after the popes came! Nothing could be too new and fine for the

chosen city. Now they are old again, but not always shabby. Many of

them, indeed, are of impressive grandeur, with carved casings and

ponderous doors. No sign of life about these--no glimpse of luxury,

faded or fresh--within. Whatever the life they hold--whatever its past

glories or present decline, it is shut away. Only the shabbier homes

were open--women at their evening duties, children playing about the

stoop. _They_ had nothing to conceal. Tradition, lineage, pride,

poverty--they had inherited their share of these things, but they did

not seem to be worrying about it. Their affairs were open to inspection;

and their habits of dress and occupation caused us to linger, until the

narrow streets grew dim and more full of evening echoes, while light

began to twinkle in the little basement shops where the ancestors of

these people had bought and sold for such a long, long time.

FOOTNOTES:

[7] Alphonse Daudet's "La Mule de Pape," in his _Lettres de Mon Moulin_,

gives a delightful picture of Avignon at this period.

Chapter IX

IN THE CITADEL OF FAITH

We were not very thorough sight-seers. We did not take a guidebook in

one hand and a pencil in the other and check the items, thus cleaning up

in the fashion of the neat, businesslike tourist. We seldom even had a

program. We just wandered out in some general direction, and made a

discovery or two, looked it over, surmised about it and passed judgment

on its artistic and historical importance, just as if we knew something

of those things; then when we got to a quiet place we took out the book

and looked up what we had seen, and quite often, with the book's

assistance, reversed our judgments and went back and got an altogether

new set of impressions, and kept whichever we liked best. It was a loose

system, to be recommended only for its variety. At the church of St.

Agricole, for instance, which we happened upon when we started out one

morning, we had a most interesting half hour discussing the age and

beauty of its crumbling exterior and wandering about in its dimness,

speculating concerning its frescoes and stained marbles and ancient

tombs. When, later, we sat on the steps outside and looked it up and

found it had been established away back in 680, and twice since

restored; that the fifteenth-century holy-water basin was an especially

fine one; that the tombs and altar piece, the sculpture and frescoes

were regarded as "remarkable examples," we were deeply impressed and

went back to verify these things. Then we could see that it was all just

as the book said.

But the procedure was somewhat different at the Palace of the Popes. We

knew where we were going then, for we saw its towers looming against the

sky, and no one could mistake that pile in Avignon. Furthermore, we paid

a small fee at its massive arched entrance, and there was a guardian, or

guide, to show us through. It is true he spoke only French--Provencal

French--but two gracious Italian ladies happened to be going through at

the same time and, like all cultured continentals, they spoke a variety

of tongues, including American. The touch of travel makes the whole

world kin, and they threw out a line when they saw us floundering, and

towed us through. It was a gentle courtesy which we accepted with

thankful hearts.

We were in the central court first, the dull, sinister walls towering on

every side. The guide said that executions had taken place there, and

once, in later times--the period of the Revolution--a massacre in which

seventy perished. He also mentioned a bishop of the earlier period who,

having fallen into disfavor, was skinned alive and burned just outside

the palace entrance. Think of doing that to a bishop!

Our conductor showed us something which we were among the first to see.

Excavation was going on, and near the entrance some workmen were

uncovering a large square basin--a swimming pool, he said--probably of

Roman times. Whatever had stood there had doubtless fallen into

obliterated ruin by the time the papal palace was begun.

A survey of the court interior showed that a vast scheme of restoration

was going on. The old fortress had suffered from siege more than once,

and time had not spared it; but with that fine pride which the French

have in their monuments, and with a munificence which would seem to be

limitless, they were reconstructing perfectly every ruined part, and

would spend at least two million dollars, we were told, to make the

labor complete. Battered corners of towers had been carefully rebuilt,

tumbled parapets replaced. We stood facing an exquisite mullioned window

whose carved stone outlines were entirely new, yet delicately and finely

cut, certainly at a cost of many thousand francs. The French do not seem

to consider expense in a work of that sort. Concrete imitations will not

do. Whatever is replaced must be as it was in the beginning.

Inside we found ourselves in the stately audience room, measuring some

fifty by one hundred and eighty feet, its lofty ceiling supported by

massive Gothic arches, all as complete as when constructed. Each missing

piece or portion has been replaced. It was scarcely more perfect when

the first papal audience was held there and when Queen Jeanne of Naples

came to plead for absolution, nearly six centuries ago. It was of

overpowering size and interest, and in one of the upper corners was a

picture I shall not soon forget. It was not a painting or tapestry, but

it might have been either of these things and less beautiful. It was a

living human being, a stone carver on a swinging high seat, dressed in

his faded blue cap and blouse and chopping away at a lintel. But he had

the face and beard and, somehow, the figure of a saint. He turned to

regard us with a mild, meditative interest, the dust on his beard and

dress completing the harmony with the gray wall behind him, the embodied

spirit of restoration.

We ascended to the pontifical chapel, similar in size and appearance to

the room below. We passed to other gigantic apartments, some of them

rudely and elaborately decorated by the military that in later years

made this a garrison. We were taken to the vast refectory, where once

there was a great central table, the proportions of which were plainly

marked by an outline on the stone floor, worn by the feet of feasting

churchmen. Then we went to the kitchen, still more impressive in its

suggestion of the stouter needs of piety. Its chimney is simply a

gigantic central funnel that, rising directly from the four walls, goes

towering and tapering toward the stars. I judge the cooks built their

fires in the center of this room, hanging their pots on cranes, swinging

their meats barbecue fashion, opening the windows for air and draught.

Those old popes and legates were no weaklings, to have a kitchen like

that. Their appetites and digestions, like their faith, were of a robust

and militant sort.

I dare say it would require a week to go through all this palace, so the

visitor is shown only samples of it. We ascended to one of the towers

and looked down, far down, on the roofs of Avignon--an expanse of brown

tiling, toned by the ages, but otherwise not greatly different from what

the popes saw when this tower and these housetops were new. Beyond are

the blue hills which have not changed. Somewhere out there Petrarch's

Laura was buried, but the grave has vanished utterly, the church is a

mere remnant.

As we stood in the window a cold breath of wind suddenly blew in--almost

piercing for the season. "The mistral," our conductor said, and, though

he did not cross himself, we knew by his exalted smile that he felt in

it the presence of the poet of the south.

Then he told us that Mistral had appointed him as one of those who were

commissioned to preserve in its purity the Provencal tongue. That he was

very proud of it was certain, and willing to let that wind blow on him

as a sort of benediction. It is said, however, that the mistral wind is

not always agreeable in Avignon. It blows away disease, but it is likely

to overdo its work. "Windy Avignon, liable to the plague when it has not

the wind, and plagued by the wind when it has it," is a saying at least

as old as this palace.

We got a generous example of it when we at last descended to the street.

There it swirled and raced and grabbed at us until we had to button

everything tightly and hold fast to our hats. We took refuge in the old

cathedral of Notre Dame des Domes, where John XXII, who brought this

glory to Avignon, lies in his Gothic tomb. All the popes of Avignon were

crowned here; it was the foremost church of Christendom for the better

part of a century. We could see but little of the interior, for, with

the now clouded sky, the place was too dark. In the small chapel where

the tomb stands it was dim and still. It is the holy place of Avignon.

A park adjoins the church and we went into it, but the mistral wind was

tearing through the trees and we crossed and descended by a long flight

to the narrow streets. Everywhere about us the lower foundations of the

papal palace joined the living rock, its towers seeming to climb upward

to the sky. It was as if it had grown out of the rock, indestructible,

eternal, itself a rock of ages.

We are always saying how small the world is, and we had it suddenly

brought home to us as we stood there under the shadow of those

overtopping heights. We had turned to thank our newly made friends and

to say good-by. One of them said, "You are from America; perhaps you

might happen to know a friend of ours there," and she named one whom we

did know very well indeed--one, in fact, whose house we had visited only

a few months before. How strange it seemed to hear that name from two

women of Florence there in the ancient city, under those everlasting

walls.

Chapter X

AN OLD TRADITION AND A NEW EXPERIENCE

Among the things I did on the ship was to read the _Automobile

Instruction Book_. I had never done it before. I had left all technical

matters to a man hired and trained for the business. Now I was going to

a strange land with a resolve to do all the things myself. So I read the

book.

It was as fascinating as a novel, and more impressive. There never was a

novel like it for action and psychology. When I came to the chapter

"Thirty-seven reasons why the motor may not start," and feverishly read

what one had better try in the circumstances, I could see that as a

subject for strong emotional treatment a human being is nothing to an

automobile.

Then there was the oiling diagram. A physiological chart would be

nowhere beside it. It was a perfect maze of hair lines and arrow points,

and looked as if it needed to be combed. There were places to be oiled

daily, others to be oiled weekly, some to be oiled monthly, some every

thousand miles. There were also places to be greased at all these

periods, and some when you happened to think of it. You had to put on

your glasses and follow one of the fine lines to the lubricating point,

then try to keep the point in your head until you could get under the

car, or over the car, or into the car, and trace it home. I could see

that this was going to be interesting when the time came.

I did not consider that it had come when we landed at Marseilles. I said

to the garage man there, in my terse French idiom, "Make it the oil and

grease," and walked away. Now, at Avignon, the new regime must begin. In

the bright little, light little hotel garage we would set our car in

order. I say "we" because Narcissa, aged fifteen, being of a practical

turn, said she would help me. I would "make it the oil and grease," and

Narcissa would wash and polish. So we began. The Joy, aged ten, was

audience.

Narcissa enjoyed her job. There was a hose in it, and a sponge and nice

rubbing rags and polish, and she went at it in her strenuous way, and

hosed me up one side and down the other at times when I was tracing some

blind lead and she wasn't noticing carefully.

I said I would make a thorough job of it. I would oil and grease all the

daily, weekly, and monthly, and even the once-in-a-while places. We

would start fair from Avignon.

I am a resolute person. I followed those tangled lines and labyrinthian

ways into the vital places of our faithful vehicle. Some led to caps,

big and little, which I filled with grease. Most of them were full

already, but I gave them another dab for luck. Some of the lines led to

tiny caps and holes into which I squirted oil. Some led to a dim

uncertainty, into which I squirted or dabbed something in a general way.

Some led to mere blanks, and I greased those. It sounds rather easy,

but that is due to my fluent style. It was not easy; it was a hot,

messy, scratchy, grunting job. Those lines were mostly blind leads, and

full of smudgy, even painful surprises. Some people would have been

profane, but I am not like that--not with Narcissa observing me. One

hour, two, went by, and I was still consulting the chart and dabbing

with the oil can and grease stick. The chart began to show wear; _it_

would not need greasing again for years.

Meantime Narcissa had finished her washing and polishing, and was

putting dainty touches on the glass and metal features to kill time. I

said at last that possibly I had missed some places, but I didn't think

they could be important ones. Narcissa looked at me, then, and said that

maybe I had missed places on the car but that I hadn't missed any on

myself. She said I was a sight and probably never could be washed clean

again. It is true that my hands were quite solidly black, and, while I

did not recall wiping them on my face, I must have done so. When

Narcissa asked how soon I was going to grease the car again, I said

possibly in about a thousand years. But that was petulance; I knew it

would be sooner. Underneath all I really had a triumphant feeling, and

Narcissa was justly proud of her work, too. We agreed that our car had

never looked handsomer and shinier since our first day of ownership. I

said I was certain it had never been so thoroughly greased. We would

leave Avignon in style.

We decided to cross the Rhone at Avignon. We wanted at least a passing

glance at Villeneuve, and a general view of Avignon itself, which was

said to be finest from across the river. We would then continue up the

west bank--there being a special reason for this--a reason with a

village in it--one Beauchastel--not set down on any of our maps, but

intimately concerned with our travel program, as will appear later.

We did not leave Avignon by the St. Benezet bridge. We should have liked

that, for it is one of those bridges built by a miracle, away back in

the twelfth century when they used miracles a good deal for such work.

Sometimes Satan was induced to build them overnight, but I believe that

was still earlier. Satan seems to have retired from active

bridge-building by the twelfth century. It was a busy period for him at

home.

So the Benezet bridge was built by a boy of that name--a little shepherd

of twelve, who received a command in a dream to go to Avignon and build

a bridge across the Rhone. He said:

"I cannot leave my sheep, and I have but three farthings in the world."

"Your flocks will not stray," said the voice, "and an angel will lead

thee."

Benezet awoke and found beside him a pilgrim whom he somehow knew to be

an angel. So they journeyed together and after many adventures reached

Avignon. Here the pilgrim disappeared and Benezet went alone to where a

bishop was preaching to the people. There, in the presence of the

assembly, Benezet stated clearly that Heaven had sent him to build a

bridge across the Rhone. Angry at the interruption, the bishop ordered

the ragged boy to be taken in charge by the guard and punished for

insolence and untruth. That was an ominous order. Men had been skinned

alive on those instructions. But Benezet repeated his words to the

officer, a rough man, who said:

"Can a beggar boy like you do what neither the saints nor Emperor

Charlemagne has been able to accomplish? Pick up this stone as a

beginning, and carry it to the river. If you can do that I may believe

in you."

It was a sizable stone, being thirteen feet long by seven

broad--thickness not given, though probably three feet, for it was a

fragment of a Roman wall. It did not trouble Benezet, however. He said

his prayers, and lightly lifted it to his shoulder and carried it across

the town! Some say he whistled softly as he passed along.

I wish I had lived then. I would almost be willing to trade centuries to

see Benezet surprise those people, carrying in that easy way a stone

that reached up to the second-story windows. Benezet carried the stone

to the bank of the river and set it down where the first arch of the

bridge would stand.

There was no trouble after that. Everybody wanted to stand well with

Benezet. Labor and contributions came unasked. In eleven years the great

work was finished, but Benezet did not live to see it. He died four

years before the final stones were laid, was buried in a chapel on the

bridge itself and canonized as a saint. There is another story about

him, but I like this one best.

Benezet's bridge was a gay place during the days of the popes at

Avignon. Music and dancing were continuously going on there. It is ready

for another miracle now. Only four arches of its original eighteen are

standing. Storm and flood did not destroy it, but war. Besiegers and

besieged broke down the arches, and at last, more than two hundred years

ago, repairs were given up. It is a fine, firm-looking fragment that

remains. One wishes, for the sake of the little shepherd boy, that it

might be restored once more and kept solid through time.

Passing along under the ramparts of Avignon, we crossed the newer,

cheaper bridge, and took the first turn to the right. It was a leafy

way, and here and there between the trees we had splendid glimpses of

the bastioned walls and castle-crowned heights of Avignon. Certainly

there is no more impressive mediaeval picture in all Europe.

But on one account we were not entirely satisfied. It was not the view

that disturbed us; it was ourselves--our car. We were smoking--smoking

badly, disgracefully; one could not deny it. In New York City we would

have been taken in charge at once. At first I said it was only a little

of the fresh oil burning off the engine, and that it would stop

presently. But that excuse wore out. It would have taken quarts to make

a smudge like that. When the wind was with us we traveled in a cloud,

like prophets and deities of old, and the passengers grumbled. The Joy

suggested that we would probably blow up soon.

Then we began to make another discovery; when now and then the smoke

cleared away a little, we found we were not in Villeneuve at all. We

had not entirely crossed the river, but only halfway; we were on an

island. I began to feel that our handsome start had not turned out well.

We backed around and drove slowly to the bridge again, our distinction

getting more massive and solid every minute. Disaster seemed imminent.

The passengers were inclined to get out and walk. I said, at last, that

we would go back to a garage I had noticed outside the walls. I put it

on the grounds that we needed gasoline.

It was not far, and the doors stood open. The men inside saw us coming

with our gorgeous white tail filling the landscape behind us, and got

out of the way. Then they gathered cautiously to examine us.

"Too much oil," they said.

In my enthusiasm I had overdone the thing. I had poured quarts into the

crank case when there was probably enough there already. I had not been

altogether to blame. Two little telltale cocks that were designed to

drip when there was sufficient oil had failed to drip because they were

stopped with dust. Being new and green, I had not thought of that

possibility. A workman poked a wire into those little cocks and drew off

the fuel we had been burning in that lavish way. So I had learned

something, but it seemed a lot of smoke for such a small spark of

experience. Still, it was a relief to know that it was nothing worse,

and while the oil was dripping to its proper level we went back into the

gates of Avignon, where, lunching in a pretty garden under some trees,

we made light of our troubles, as is our way.

Chapter XI

WAYSIDE ADVENTURES

So we took a new start and made certain that we entirely crossed the

river this time. We were in Villeneuve-les-Avignon--that is, the "new

town"--but it did not get that name recently, if one may judge from its

looks. Villeneuve, in fact, is fourteen hundred years old, and shows its

age. It was in its glory six centuries ago, when King Philippe le Bel

built his tower at the end of Benezet's bridge, and Jean le Bon built

one of the sternest-looking fortresses in France--Fort St. Andre. Time

has made the improvements since then. It has stained the walls and

dulled the sharp masonry of these monuments; it has crushed and crumbled

the feebler structures and filled the streets with emptiness and

silence. Villeneuve was a thronging, fighting, praying place once, but

the throng has been reduced and the fighting and praying have become

matters of individual enterprise.

I wish now we had lingered at Villeneuve-les-Avignon. I have rarely seen

a place that seemed so to invite one to forget the activities of life

and go groping about among the fragments of history. But we were under

the influence of our bad start, and impelled to move on. Also,

Villeneuve was overshadowed by the magnificence of the Palace of the

Popes, which, from its eternal seat on le Rocher des Doms, still claimed

us. We briefly visited St. Andre, the tower of Philippe le Bel, and

loitered a little in a Chartreuse monastery--a perfect wilderness of

ruin; then slipped away, following the hard, smooth road through a

garden and wonderland, the valley of the Rhone.

I believe there are no better vineyards in France than those between

Avignon and Bagnols. The quality of the grapes is another matter; they

are probably sour. All the way along those luscious topaz and amethyst

clusters had been disturbing, but my conscience had held firm and I had

passed them by. Sometimes I said: "There are tons of those grapes; a few

bunches would never be missed." But Narcissa and the others said it

would be stealing; besides, there were houses in plain view.

But there is a limit to all things. In a level, sheltered place below

Bagnols we passed a vineyard shut in by trees, with no house in sight.

And what a vineyard! Ripening in the afternoon sun, clustered such gold

and purple bunches as were once warmed by the light of Eden. I looked

casually in different directions and slowed down. Not a sign of life

anywhere. I brought the car to a stop. I said, "This thing has gone far

enough."

Conscience dozed. The protests of the others fell on heedless ears. I

firmly crossed the irrigating ditch which runs along all those French

roads, stepped among the laden vines, picked one of those lucent, yellow

bunches and was about to pick another when I noticed something with a

human look stir to life a little way down the row.

Conscience awoke with something like a spasm. I saw at once that taking

those grapes was wrong; I almost dropped the bunch I had. Narcissa says

I ran, but that is a mistake. There was not room. I made about two steps

and plunged into the irrigating canal, which I disremembered for the

moment, my eyes being fixed on the car. Narcissa says she made a grab at

my grapes as they sailed by. I seemed to be a good while getting out of

the irrigating ditch, but Narcissa thinks I was reasonably prompt. I had

left the engine running, and some seconds later, when we were putting

temptation behind us on third speed, I noticed that the passengers

seemed to be laughing. When I inquired as to what amused them they

finally gasped out that the thing which had moved among the grapevines

was a goat, as if that made any difference to a person with a sensitive

conscience.

It is not likely that any reader of these chapters will stop overnight

at Bagnols. We should hardly have rested there, but evening was coming

on and the sky had a stormy look. Later we were glad, for we found

ourselves in an inn where d'Artagnan, or his kind, lodged, in the days

when knights went riding. Travelers did not arrive in automobiles when

that hostelry was built, and not frequently in carriages. They came on

horseback and clattered up to the open door and ordered tankards of good

red wine, and drank while their horses stretched their necks to survey

the interior scenery. The old worn cobbles are still at the door, and

not much has changed within. A niche holds a row of candles, and the

traveler takes one of them and lights himself to bed. His room is an

expanse and his bed stands in a curtained alcove--the bedstead an

antique, the bed billowy, clean, and comfortable, as all beds are in

France. Nothing has been changed there for a long time. The latest

conveniences are of a date not more recent than the reign of Marie

Antoinette, for they are exactly the kind she used, still to be seen at

Versailles. And the dinner was good, with red and white flagons strewn

all down the table--such a dinner as d'Artagnan and his wild comrades

had, no doubt, and if prices have not changed they paid five francs

fifty, or one dollar and ten cents each, for dinner, lodging, and _petit

dejeuner_ (coffee, rolls, and jam)--garage free.

Bagnols is unimportant to the tourist, but it is old and quaint, and it

has what may be found in many unimportant places in France, at least one

beautiful work of art--a soldier's monument, in this instance; _not_ a

stiff effigy of an infantryman with a musket, cut by some gifted

tombstone sculptor, but a female figure of Victory, full of vibrant life

and inspiration--a true work of art. France is full of such things as

that--one finds them in most unexpected places.

The valley of the Rhone grew more picturesque as we ascended. Now and

again, at our left, rocky bluffs rose abruptly, some of them crowned

with ruined towers and equally ruined villages, remnants of feudalism,

of the lord and his vassals who had fought and flourished there in that

time when France was making the romantic material which writers ever

since have been so busily remaking and adorning that those old originals

would stare and gasp if they could examine some of it now. How fine and

grand it seems to picture the lord and his men, all bright and shining,

riding out under the portcullis on glossy prancing and armored horses to

meet some aggressive and equally shining detachment of feudalism from

the next hilltop. In the valley they meet, with ringing cries and the

clash of steel. Foeman matches foeman--it is a series of splendid duels,

combats to be recounted by the fireside for generations. Then, at the

end, the knightly surrender of the conquered, the bended knee and

acknowledgment of fealty, gracious speeches from the victor as to the

bravery and prowess of the defeated, after which, the welcome of fair

ladies and high wassail for all concerned. Everybody happy, everybody

satisfied: wounds apparently do not count or interfere with festivities.

The dead disappear in some magic way. I do not recall that they are ever

buried.

Just above Rochemaure was one of the most imposing of these ruins. The

castle that crowned the hilltop had been a fine structure in its day.

The surrounding outer wall which inclosed its village extended downward

to the foot of the hill to the road--and still inclosed a village,

though the more ancient houses seemed tenantless. It was built for

offense and defense, that was certain, and doubtless had been used for

both. We did not stop to dig up that romance. Not far away, by the

roadside, stood what was apparently a Roman column. It had been already

old and battered--a mere fragment of a ruin--when the hilltop castle and

its village were brave and new.

It was above Rochemaure--I did not identify the exact point--that an

opportunity came which very likely I shall never have again. On a bluff

high above an ancient village, so old and curious that it did not belong

to reality at all, there was a great chateau, not a ruin--at least, not

a tumbled ruin, though time-beaten and gray--but a good complete

chateau, and across its mossy lintel a stained and battered wooden sign

with the legend, "_A Louer_"--that is, "To Let."

I stopped the car. This, I said, was our opportunity. Nothing could be

better than that ancient and lofty perch overlooking the valley of the

Rhone. The "To Let" sign had been there certainly a hundred years, so

the price would be reasonable. We could get it for a song; we would

inherit its traditions, its secret passages, its donjons, its ghosts,

its-- I paused a moment, expecting enthusiasm, even eagerness, on the

part of the family. Strange as it may seem, there wasn't a particle of

either. I went over those things again, and added new and fascinating

attractions. I said we would adopt the coat of arms of that old family,

hyphenate its name with ours, and so in that cheap and easy fashion

achieve a nobility which the original owner had probably shed blood to

attain.

It was no use. The family looked up the hill with an interest that was

almost clammy. Narcissa asked, "How would you get the car up there?" The

Joy said, "It would be a good place for bad dreams." The head of the

expedition remarked, as if dismissing the most trivial item of the

journey, that we'd better be going on or we should be late getting into

Valence. So, after dreaming all my life of living in a castle, I had to

give it up in that brief, incidental way.

Chapter XII

THE LOST NAPOLEON

Now, it is just here that we reach the special reason which had kept us

where we had a clear view of the eastward mountains, and particularly to

the westward bank of the Rhone, where there was supposed to be a certain

tiny village, one Beauchastel--a village set down on none of our maps,

yet which was to serve as an important identifying mark. The reason had

its beginning exactly twenty-two years before; that is to say, in

September, 1891. Mark Twain was in Europe that year, seeking health and

literary material, and toward the end of the summer--he was then at

Ouchy, Switzerland--he decided to make a floating trip down the river

Rhone. He found he could start from Lake Bourget in France, and, by

paddling through a canal, reach the strong Rhone current, which would

carry him seaward. Joseph Very, his favorite guide (mentioned in _A

Tramp Abroad_), went over to Lake Bourget and bought a safe,

flat-bottomed boat, retaining its former owner as pilot, and with these

accessories Mark Twain made one of the most peaceful and delightful

excursions of his life. Indeed, he enjoyed it so much and so lazily that

after the first few days he gave up making extended notes and

surrendered himself entirely to the languorous fascination of drifting

idly through the dreamland of southern France. On the whole, it was an

eventless excursion, with one exception--a startling exception, as he

believed.

One afternoon, when they had been drifting several days, he sighted a

little village not far ahead, on the west bank, an ancient "jumble of

houses," with a castle, one of the many along that shore. It looked

interesting and he suggested that they rest there for the night. Then,

chancing to glance over his shoulder toward the eastward mountains, he

received a sudden surprise--a "soul-stirring shock," as he termed it

later. The big blue eastward mountain was no longer a mere mountain, but

a gigantic portrait in stone of one of his heroes. Eagerly turning to

Joseph Very and pointing to the huge effigy, he asked him to name it.

The courier said, "Napoleon." The boatman also said, "Napoleon." It

seemed to them, indeed, almost uncanny, this lifelike, reclining figure

of the conqueror, resting after battle, or, as Mark Twain put it,

"dreaming of universal empire." They discussed it in awed voices, as one

of the natural wonders of the world, which perhaps they had been the

first to discover. They landed at the village, Beauchastel, and next

morning Mark Twain, up early, watched the sun rise from behind the great

stone face of his discovery. He made a pencil sketch in his notebook,

and recorded the fact that the figure was to be seen from Beauchastel.

That morning, drifting farther down the Rhone, they watched it until the

human outlines changed.

Mark Twain's Rhone trip was continued as far as Arles, where the current

slackened. He said that some one would have to row if they went on,

which would mean work, and that he was averse to work, even in another

person. He gave the boat to its former owner, took Joseph, and rejoined

the family in Switzerland.

Events thronged into Mark Twain's life: gay winters, summers of travel,

heavy literary work, business cares and failures, a trip around the

world, bereavement. Amid such a tumult the brief and quiet Rhone trip

was seldom even remembered.

But ten or eleven years later, when he had returned to America and was

surrounded by quieter things, he happened to remember the majestic

figure of the first Napoleon discovered that September day while

drifting down the Rhone. He recalled no more than that. His memory was

always capricious--he had even forgotten that he made a sketch of the

figure, with notes identifying the locality. He could picture clearly

enough the incident, the phenomenon, the surroundings, but the name of

the village had escaped him, and he located it too far down, between

Arles and Avignon.

All his old enthusiasm returned now. He declared if the presence of this

great natural wonder was made known to the world, tourists would flock

to the spot, hotels would spring up there--all other natural curiosities

would fall below it in rank. His listeners caught his enthusiasm.

Theodore Stanton, the journalist, declared he would seek and find the

"Lost Napoleon," as Mark Twain now called it, because he was unable to

identify the exact spot. He assured Stanton that it would be perfectly

easy to find, as he could take a steamer from Arles to Avignon, and by

keeping watch he could not miss it. Stanton returned to Europe and began

the search. I am not sure that he undertook the trip himself, but he

made diligent inquiries of Rhone travelers and steamer captains, and a

lengthy correspondence passed between him and Mark Twain on the subject.

No one had seen the "Lost Napoleon." Travelers passing between Avignon

and Arles kept steady watch on the east range, but the apparition did

not appear. Mark Twain eventually wrote an article, intending to publish

it, in the hope that some one would report the mislaid emperor. However,

he did not print the sketch, which was fortunate enough, for with its

misleading directions it would have made him unpopular with disappointed

travelers. The locality of his great discovery was still a mystery when

Mark Twain died.

So it came about that our special reason for following the west bank of

the Rhone--the Beauchastel side, in plain view of the eastward

mountains--was to find the "Lost Napoleon." An easy matter, it seemed in

prospect, for we had what the others had lacked--that is to say, exact

information as to its locality--the notes, made twenty-two years before

by Mark Twain himself[8]--the pencil sketch, and memoranda stating that

the vision was to be seen opposite the village of Beauchastel.

But now there developed what seemed to be another mystery. Not only our

maps and our red-book, but patient inquiry as well, failed to reveal

any village or castle by the name of Beauchastel. It was a fine,

romantic title, and we began to wonder if it might not be a combination

of half-caught syllables, remembered at the moment of making the notes,

and converted by Mark Twain's imagination into this happy sequence of

sounds.

So we must hunt and keep the inquiries going. We had begun the hunt as

soon as we left Avignon, and the inquiries when there was opportunity.

Then presently the plot thickened. The line of those eastward mountains

began to assume many curious shapes. Something in their formation was

unlike other mountains, and soon it became not difficult to imagine a

face almost anywhere. Then at one point appeared a real face, no

question this time as to the features, only it was not enough like the

face of the sketch to make identification sure. We discussed it

anxiously and with some energy, and watched it a long time, thinking

possibly it would gradually melt into the right shape, and that

Beauchastel or some similarly sounding village would develop along the

river bank.

But the likeness did not improve, and, while there were plenty of

villages, there was none with a name the sound of which even suggested

Beauchastel. Altogether we discovered as many as five faces that day,

and became rather hysterical at last, and called them our collection of

lost Napoleons, though among them was not one of which we could say with

conviction, "Behold, the Lost Napoleon!" This brought us to Bagnols, and

we had a fear now that we were past the viewpoint--that somehow our

search, or our imagination, had been in vain.

But then came the great day. Up and up the Rhone, interested in so many

things that at times we half forgot to watch the eastward hills, passing

village after village, castle after castle, but never the "jumble of

houses" and the castle that commanded the vision of the great chief

lying asleep along the eastern horizon.

I have not mentioned, I think, that at the beginning of most French

villages there is a signboard, the advertisement of a firm of

auto-stockists, with the name of the place, and the polite request to

"_Ralentir_"--that is, to "go slow." At the other end of the village is

another such a sign, and on the reverse you read, as you pass out,

"_Merci_"--which is to say, "Thanks," for going slowly; so whichever way

you come you get information, advice, and politeness from these boards,

a feature truly French.

Well, it was a little way above the chateau which I did not rent, and we

were driving along slowly, thinking of nothing at all, entering an

unimportant-looking place, when Narcissa, who always sees everything,

suddenly uttered the magical word "Beauchastel!"

[Illustration: MARK TWAIN'S "LOST NAPOLEON"

"THE COLOSSAL SLEEPING FIGURE IN ITS SUPREME REPOSE"]

It was like an electric shock--the soul-stirring shock which Mark Twain

had received at the instant of his great discovery. Beauchastel! Not a

figment, then, but a reality--the veritable jumble of houses we had been

seeking, and had well-nigh given up as a myth. Just there the houses

interfered with our view, but a hundred yards farther along a vista

opened to the horizon, and there at last, in all its mightiness and

dignity and grandeur, lay the Lost Napoleon! It is not likely that any

other natural figure in stone ever gave two such sudden and splendid

thrills of triumph, first, to its discoverer, and, twenty-two years

later, almost to the day, to those who had discovered it again. There

was no question this time. The colossal sleeping figure in its supreme

repose confuted every doubt, resting where it had rested for a million

years, and would still rest for a million more.

At first we spoke our joy eagerly, then fell into silence, looking and

looking, loath to go, for fear it would change. At every opening we

halted to look again, and always with gratification, for it did not

change, or so gradually that for miles it traveled with us, and still at

evening, when we were nearing Valence, there remained a great stone face

on the horizon.

FOOTNOTES:

[8] At Mark Twain's death his various literary effects passed into the

hands of his biographer, the present writer.

Chapter XIII

THE HOUSE OF HEADS

I ought to say, I suppose, that we were no longer in Provence. Even at

Avignon we were in Venaissin, according to present geography, and when

we crossed the Rhone we passed into Languedoc. Now, at Valence, we were

in Dauphine, of which Valence is the "chief-lieu," meaning, I take it,

the official headquarters. I do not think these are the old divisions at

all, and in any case it all has been "the Midi," which to us is the

Provence, the vineland, songland, and storyland of a nation where vine

and song and story flourish everywhere so lavishly that strangers come,

never to bring, but only to carry away.

At Valence, however, romance hesitates on the outskirts. The light of

other days grows dim in its newer electric glow. Old castles surmount

the hilltops, but one needs a field glass to see them. The city itself

is modern and busy, prosperous in its manufacture of iron, silk,

macaroni, and certain very good liquors.

I believe the chief attraction of Valence is the "House of the Heads."

Our guidebook has a picture which shows Napoleon Bonaparte standing at

the entrance, making his adieus to Montalivet, who, in a later day, was

to become his minister. Napoleon had completed his military education

in the artillery school of Valence, and at the moment was setting out to

fulfill his dream of conquest. It is rather curious, when you think of

it, that the great natural stone portrait already described should be

such a little distance away.

To go back to the House of the Heads: Our book made only the briefest

mention of its construction, and told nothing at all of its traditions.

We stood in front of it, gazing in the dim evening light at the

crumbling carved faces of its facade, peering through into its ancient

court where there are now apartments to let, wondering as to its

history. One goes raking about in the dusty places of his memory at such

moments; returning suddenly from an excursion of that sort, I said I

recalled the story of a house of carved heads--something I had heard, or

read, long ago--and that this must be the identical house concerning

which the story had been told.

It was like this: There was a wealthy old bachelor of ancient days who

had spent his life in collecting rare treasures of art; pictures,

tapestries, choice metal-work, arms--everything that was beautiful and

rare; his home was a storehouse of priceless things. He lived among

them, attended only by a single servant--the old woman who had been his

nurse--a plain, masculine creature, large of frame, still strong and

brawny, stout of heart and of steadfast loyalty. When the master was

away gathering new treasures she slept in the room where the arms were

kept, with a short, sharp, two-edged museum piece by her couch, and

without fear.

One morning he told her of a journey he was about to take, and said: "I

hesitate to leave you here alone. You are no longer young."

But she answered: "Only by the count of years, not by the measure of

strength or vigilance. I am not afraid."

So he left her, to return on the third day. But on the evening of the

second day, when the old servant went down to the lower basement for

fuel--silently, in her softly slippered feet--she heard low voices at a

small window that opened to the court. She crept over to it and found

that a portion of the sash had been removed; listening, she learned that

a group of men outside in the dusk were planning to enter and rob the

house. They were to wait until she was asleep, then creep in through the

window, make their way upstairs, kill her, and carry off the treasures.

It seemed a good plan, but as the old servant listened she formed a

better one. She crept back upstairs, not to lock herself in and stand a

siege, but to get her weapon, the short, heavy sword with its two razor

edges. Then she came back and sat down to wait. While she was waiting

she entertained herself by listening to their plans and taking a little

quiet muscle exercise. By and by she heard them say that the old hag

would surely be asleep by this time. The "old hag" smiled grimly and got

ready.

A man put his head in. It was pitch dark inside, but just enough light

came in from the stars for her to see where to strike. When half his

body was through she made a clean slicing swing of the heavy sword and

the robber's head dropped on a little feather bed which she had

thoughtfully provided. The old woman seized the shoulders and firmly

drew the rest of the man inside. Another head came in, slowly, the

shoulders following. With another swing of the sword they had parted

company, and the grim avenging hands were silently dragging in the

remnant. Another head and shoulders followed, another, and another,

until six heads and bodies were stacked about the executioner and there

was blood enough to swim in. The seventh robber did not appear

immediately; something about the silence within made him reluctant. He

was suspicious, he did not know of what. He put his head to the opening

and whispered, asking if everything was all right. The old woman was no

longer calm. The violent exercise and intense interest in her occupation

had unnerved her. She was afraid she could not control her voice to

answer, and that he would get away. She made a supreme effort and

whispered, "Yes, all right." So he put in his head--very

slowly--hesitated, and started to withdraw. The old woman, however, did

not hesitate. She seized him by the hair, brought the sword down with a

fierce one-hand swing, and the treasures of this world troubled him no

more.

Then the old servant went crazy. Returning next morning, her master

found her covered with blood, brandishing her sword, and repeating over

and over, "Seven heads, and all mine," and at sight of him lost

consciousness. She recovered far enough to tell her story, then,

presently, died. But in her honor the master rebuilt the front of his

dwelling and had carved upon it the heads of the men she had so

promptly and justly punished.

Now, I said, this must be the very house, and we regarded it with awe

and tried to locate the little cellar window where the execution had

taken place. It was well enough in the evening dimness, but in the

morning when we went around there again I privately began to have doubts

as to the legend's authenticity, at least so far as this particular

house was concerned. The heads, by daylight, did not look like the heads

of house breakers--not any house breakers of my acquaintance--and I

later consulted a guidebook which attached to them the names of Homer,

Hippocrates, Aristotle, Pythagoras, etc., and I don't think those were

the names of the parties concerned in this particular affair. It's very

hard to give up a good and otherwise perfectly fitting legend, but one

must either do that or change the guidebook. Ah, well, it isn't the

first sacrifice I've had to make for the sake of history.

Valence has been always a place of culture and educational activity. It

was capital of Segalauni before the Romans came, and there was a

celebrated school there, even then. This information also came from the

guidebook, and it surprised me. It was the first time I had heard that

the Segalaunians had a school prior to the Roman conquest. It was also

the first time I had heard of the Segalaunians. I thought they were all

Gauls and Goths and Vandals up that way, and that their education

consisted in learning how to throw a spear convincingly, or to divert

one with a rawhide buckler. Now I discovered they had a college before

the Romans conquered them. One can hardly blame them for descending upon

those Romans later, with fire and sword. Valence shared the usual fate.

It was ravished by the so-called barbarians, and later hacked to pieces

by Christian kings. To-day again it is a fair city, with parks, wide

boulevards, and imposing monuments.

Chapter XIV

INTO THE HILLS

Turning eastward from Valence, we headed directly for the mountains and

entered a land with all the wealth of increase we had found in Provence,

and with even more of picturesqueness. The road was still perfect--hard

and straight, with an upward incline, but with a grade so gradual and

perfect as to be barely noticeable. Indeed, there were times when we

seemed actually to be descending, even when the evidence of gravity told

us that we were climbing; that is to say, we met water coming toward

us--water flowing by the roadside--and more than once Narcissa and I

agreed that the said water was running uphill, which was not likely--not

in France. Of course, in England, where they turn to the left, it might

be expected. The village did not seem quite like those along the Rhone.

The streets were as narrow, the people as mildly interested in us, but,

on the whole, we thought the general aspect was less ancient, possibly

less clean.

But they were interesting. Once we saw a man beating a drum, stopping on

every corner to collect a little crowd and read some sort of

proclamation, and once by the roadside we met a little negro child in a

straw hat and a bright dress, a very bit of the American South.

Everywhere were pretty gardens, along the walls gay flowers, and always

the valleys were rich in orchard and vineyard, plumed with tall poplars,

divided by bright rivers, and glorified with hazy September sunlight.

We grew friendly with the mountains in the course of the afternoon, then

intimate. They sprang up before us and behind us; just across the

valleys they towered into the sky. Indeed, we suddenly had a most

dramatic proof that we were climbing one. We had been shut in by wooded

roads and sheltered farmsteads for an hour or two when we came out again

into the open valley, with the river flowing through. But we were no

longer _in_ the valley! Surprise of surprises! we were on a narrow,

lofty road hundreds of feet above it, skirting the mountainside! It

seemed incredible that our gradual, almost imperceptible, ascent had

brought us to that high perch, overlooking this marvelous Vale of

Cashmere. Everyone has two countries, it is said; his own and France.

One could understand that saying here, and why the French are not an

emigrating race. We stopped to gaze our fill, and as we went along, the

scenery attracted my attention so much that more than once I nearly

drove off into it. We were so engrossed by the picture that we took the

wrong road and went at least ten miles out of our way to get to

Grenoble. But it did not matter; we saw startlingly steep mountainsides

that otherwise we might not have seen, and dashing streams, and at the

end we had a wild and glorious coast of five or six miles from our

mountain fastness down into the valley of the Isere, a regular toboggan

streak, both horns going, nerves taut, teeth set, probable disaster

waiting at every turn. We had never done such a thing before, and

promised ourselves not to do it again. One such thrill was worth while,

perhaps, but the ordinary lifetime might not outlast another.

Down in that evening valley we were in a wonderland. Granite walls rose

perpendicularly on our left; cottages nestled in gardens at our

right--bloom, foliage, fragrance, the flowing Isere. Surely this was the

happy valley, the land of peace and plenty, shut in by these lofty

heights from all the troubling of the world. Even the towers and spires

of a city that presently began to rise ahead of us did not disturb us.

In the evening light they were not real, and when we had entered the

gates of ancient Gratianopolis, and crossed the Isere by one of its

several bridges, it seemed that this modern Grenoble was not quite a

city of the eager world.

The hotel we selected from the red-book was on the outskirts, and we had

to draw pretty heavily on our French to find it; but it was worth while,

for it was set in a wide garden, and from every window commanded the

Alps. We realized now that they _were_ the Alps, the Alps of the Savoy,

their high green slopes so near that we could hear the tinkle of the

goat bells.

We did not take the long drive through the "impossibly beautiful"

valleys of Grenoble which we had planned for next morning. When we arose

the air was no longer full of stillness and sunlight. In fact, it was

beginning to rain. So we stayed in, and by and by for luncheon had all

the good French things, ending with fresh strawberries, great bowls of

them--in September--and apparently no novelty in this happy valley of

the Isere. All the afternoon, too, it rained, and some noisy French

youngsters raced up and down the lower rooms and halls, producing a

homelike atmosphere, while we gathered about the tables to study the

French papers and magazines.

It was among the advertisements that I made some discoveries about

French automobiles. They are more expensive than ours, in proportion to

the horsepower, the latter being usually low. About twelve to fifteen

horsepower seems to be the strength of the ordinary five-passenger

machine. Our own thirty-horsepower engine, which we thought rather light

at home, is a giant by comparison. Heavy engines are not needed in

France. The smooth roads and perfectly graded hills require not half the

power that we must expend on some of our rough, tough, rocky, and steep

highways. Again, these lighter engines and cars take less gasoline,

certainly, and that is a big item, where gasoline costs at least 100 per

cent more than in America. I suppose the lightest weight car consistent

with strength and comfort would be the thing to take to Europe. There

would be a saving in the gasoline bill; and then the customs deposit,

which is figured on the weight, would not be so likely to cripple the

owner's bank account.

Chapter XV

UP THE ISERE

Sometime in the night the rain ceased, and by morning Nature had

prepared a surprise for us. The air was crystal clear, and towering into

the sky were peaks no longer blue or green or gray, but white with

drifted snow! We were in warm, mellow September down in our valley, but

just up there--such a little way it seemed--were the drifts of winter.

With our glass we could bring them almost within snowballing distance.

Feathery clouds drifted among the peaks, the sun shooting through. It

was all new to us, and startling. These really were the Alps; there was

no further question.

"Few French cities have a finer location than Grenoble," says the

guidebook, and if I also have not conveyed this impression I have meant

to do so. Not many cities in the world, I imagine, are more

picturesquely located. It is also a large city, with a population of

more than seventy-five thousand--a city of culture, and it has been

important since the beginning of recorded history. Gratian was its

patron Roman emperor, and the name Gratianopolis, assumed in his honor,

has become the Grenoble of to-day. Gratian lived back in the fourth

century and was a capable sort of an emperor, but he had one weak point.

He liked to array himself in outlandish garb and show off. It is a

weakness common to many persons, and seems harmless enough, but it was

not a healthy thing for Gratian, who did it once too often. He came out

one day habited like a Scythian warrior and capered up and down in front

of his army. He expected admiration, and probably the title of

Scythianus, or something. But the unexpected happened. The army jeered

at his antics, and eventually assassinated him. Scythian costumes for

emperors are still out of style.

We may pass over the riot and ruin of the Middle Ages. All these towns

were alike in that respect. The story of one, with slight alterations,

fits them all. Grenoble was the first town to open its gates to

Napoleon, on his return from Elba, in 1815, which gives it a kind of

distinction in more recent times. Another individual feature is its

floods. The Isere occasionally fills its beautiful valley, and fifteen

times during the past three centuries Grenoble has been almost swept

away. There has been no flood for a long period now, and another is

about due. Prudent citizens of Grenoble keep a boat tied in the back

yard instead of a dog.

We did not linger in Grenoble. The tomb of Bayard--_sans peur, sans

reproche_--is there, in the church of St. Andre; but we did not learn of

this until later. The great sight at Grenoble is its environment--the

superlative beauty of its approaches, and its setting--all of which we

had seen in the glory of a September afternoon.

There were two roads to Chambery, one by the Isere, and another through

the mountains by way of Chartreuse which had its attractions. I always

wanted to get some of the ancient nectar at its fountainhead, and the

road was put down as "picturesque." But the rains had made the hills

slippery; a skidding automobile and old Chartreuse in two colors did not

seem a safe combination for a family car. So we took the river route,

and I am glad now, for it began raining soon after we started, and we

might not have found any comfortable ruined castle to shelter us if we

had taken to the woods and hills. As it was, we drove into a great

arched entrance, where we were safe and dry, and quite indifferent as to

what happened next. We explored the place, and were rather puzzled. It

was unlike other castles we have seen. Perhaps it had not been a castle

at all, but an immense granary, or brewery, or an ancient fortress. In

any case, it was old and massive, and its high main arch afforded us a

fine protection.

The shower passed, the sun came out, and sent us on our way. The road

was wet, but hard, and not steep. It was a neighborly road, curiously

intimate with the wayside life, its domestic geography and economies;

there were places where we seemed to be actually in front dooryards.

The weather was not settled; now and then there came a sprinkle, but

with our top up we did not mind. It being rather wet for picnicking, we

decided that we would lunch at some wayside inn. None appeared, however,

and when we came to think about it, we could not remember having

anywhere passed such an inn. There were plenty of cafes where one could

obtain wines and other beverages, but no food. In England and New

England there are plenty of hostelries along the main roads, but

evidently not in France. One must depend on the towns. So we stopped at

Challes-les-Eaux, a little way out of Chambery, a pretty place, where we

might have stayed longer if the September days had not been getting few.

Later, at Chambery, we visited the thirteenth-century chateau of the Duc

de Savoy, which has been rebuilt, and climbed the great square tower

which is about all that is left of the original structure, a grand place

in its time. We also went into the gothic chapel to see some handsomely

carved wainscoting, with a ceiling to match. We were admiring it when

the woman who was conducting us explained by signs and a combination of

languages that, while the wainscoting was carved, the ceiling was only

painted, in imitation. It was certainly marvelous if true, and she

looked like an honest woman. But I don't know-- I wanted to get up there

and feel it.

She was, at any rate, a considerate woman. When I told her in the

beginning that we had come to see the Duke of Savoy's old hat, meaning

his old castle, she hardly smiled, though Narcissa went into hysterics.

It was nothing--even a Frenchman might say "_chapeau_" when he meant

"_chateau_" and, furthermore--but let it go--it isn't important enough

to dwell upon. Anything will divert the young.

Speaking of hats, I have not mentioned, I believe, the extra one that we

carried in the car. It belonged to the head of the family and when we

loaded it (the hat) at Marseilles it was a fresh and rather fluffy bit

of finery. There did not seem to be any good place for it in the heavy

baggage, shipped by freight to Switzerland, and decidedly none in the

service bags strapped to the running-board. Besides, its owner said she

might want to wear it on the way. There was plenty of space for an extra

hat in our roomy car, we said, and there did seem to be when we loaded

it in, all neatly done up in a trim package.

But it is curious how things jostle about and lose their identity. I

never seemed to be able to remember what was in that particular package,

and was always mistaking it for other things. When luncheon time came I

invariably seized it, expecting some pleasant surprise, only to untie an

appetizing, but indigestible, hat. The wrapping began to have a

travel-worn look, the package seemed to lose bulk. When we lost the

string, at last, we found that we could tie it with a much shorter one;

when we lost that, we gave the paper a twist at the ends, which was

seldom permanent, especially when violently disturbed. Not a soul in the

car that did not at one time or another, feeling something bunchy, give

it a kick, only to expose our surplus hat, which always had a helpless,

unhappy look that invited pity. No concealment insured safety. Once the

Joy was found to have her feet on it. At another time the owner herself

was sitting on it. We seldom took it in at night, but once when we did

we forgot it, and drove back seven miles to recover. I don't know what

finally became of it.

Chapter XVI

INTO THE HAUTE-SAVOIE

It is a rare and beautiful drive to Aix-les-Bains, and it takes one by

Lake Bourget, the shimmering bit of blue water from which Mark Twain set

out on his Rhone trip. We got into a street market the moment of our

arrival in Aix, a solid swarm of dickering people. In my excitement I

let the engine stall, and it seemed we would never get through. Aix did

not much interest us, and we pushed on to Annecy with no unnecessary

delay, and from Annecy to Thones, a comfortable day's run, including, as

it did, a drive about beautiful ancient Annecy, chief city of the

Haute-Savoie. We might have stayed longer at Annecy, but the weather had

an unsettled look, and there came the feeling that storms and winter

were gathering in the mountains and we would better be getting along

somewhere else. Also a woman backed her donkey cart into us at Annecy

and put another dent in our mudguard, which was somehow discouraging. As

it was, we saw the lake, said to be the most beautiful in France, though

no more beautiful, I think, than Bourget; an ancient chateau, now

transformed into barracks; the old prison built out in the river; the

narrow, ancient streets; and a house with a tablet that states that

Jean-Jacques Rousseau lived there in 1729, and there developed his

taste for music.

The Haute-Savoie is that billowy corner of far-eastern France below Lake

Geneva--a kind of neutral, no man's territory hemmed by the huge heights

of Switzerland and Italy. Leaving Annecy, we followed a picturesque road

through a wild, weird land, along gorges and awesome brinks, under a

somber sky. At times we seemed to be on the back of the world; at others

diving to its recesses. It was the kind of way that one might take to

supernatural regions, and it was the kind of evening to start.

Here and there on the slopes were flocks and herds, attended by

grave-faced women, who were knitting as they slowly walked. They barely

noticed us or their charges. They never sat down, but followed along,

knitting, knitting, as though they were patterning the fates of men.

Sometimes we met or passed a woman on the road, always knitting, like

the others. It was uncanny. Probably for every human being there is

somewhere among those dark mountains a weird woman, knitting the pattern

of his life. That night at Thones, a forgotten hamlet, lost there in the

Haute-Savoie, a storm broke, the wind tore about our little inn, the

rain dashed fearsomely, all of which was the work of those knitting

women, beyond doubt.

But the sun came up fresh and bright, and we took the road for Geneva.

For a time it would be our last day in France. All the forenoon we were

among the mountain peaks, skirting precipices that one did not care to

look over without holding firmly to something. But there were no steep

grades and the brinks were protected by solid little walls.

At the bottom of a long slope a soldier stepped out of a box of a house

and presented arms. I dodged, but his intent was not sanguinary. He

wanted to see our papers--we were at the frontier--so I produced our

customs receipts, called _triptyques_, our T. C. de F. membership card,

our car license, our driving license, and was feeling in my pocket for

yet other things when he protested, "_Pas necessaire, pas necessaire_"

and handed all back but the French _triptyque_, which he took to his

_bureau_, where, with two other military _attaches_, he examined,

discussed, finally signed and witnessed it, and waved us on our way.

So we were not passing the Swiss customs yet, but only leaving the

French outpost. The ordeal of the Swiss _douane_ was still somewhere

ahead; we had entered the neutral strip. We wished we might reach the

Swiss post pretty soon and have the matter over with. We had visions of

a fierce person looking us through, while he fired a volley of French

questions, pulled our baggage to pieces, and weighed the car, only to

find that the result did not tally with the figures on our triple-folded

sheet. I had supplied most of those figures from memory, and I doubted

their accuracy. I had heard that of all countries except Russia,

Switzerland was about the most particular. So we went on and on through

that lofty scenery, expecting almost anything at every turn.

But nothing happened--nothing except that at one place the engine

seemed to be running rather poorly. I thought at first that there was

some obstruction in the gasoline tube, and my impulse was to light a

match and look into the tank to see what it might be. On second thought

I concluded to omit the match. I remembered reading of a man who had

done that, and almost immediately his heirs had been obliged to get a

new car.

We passed villages, but no _douane_. Then all at once we were in the

outskirts of a city. Why, this was surely Geneva, and as we were driving

leisurely along a fat little man in uniform came out and lifted his

hand. We stopped. Here it was, then, at last.

For a moment I felt a slight attack of weakness, not in the heart, but

about the knees. However, the little man seemed friendly. He held out

his hand and I shook it cordially. But it was the papers he was after,

our Swiss _triptyque_. I said to myself, "A minute more and we probably

shall be on the scales, and the next in trouble." But he only said,

"_Numero de moteur._" I jerked open the hood, scrubbed off the grease,

and showed it to him. He compared it, smiled, and handed back our paper.

Then he waved me to a _bureau_ across the street. Now it was coming; he

had doubtless discovered something wrong at a glance.

There was an efficient-looking, sinister-looking person in the office

who took the _triptyque_, glanced at it, and threw something down before

me. I thought it was a warrant, but it proved to be a copy of the Swiss

law and driving regulations, with a fine road map of Switzerland, and

all information needed by motorists; "Price, 2 Frs." stamped on the

cover. I judged that I was required to buy this, but I should have done

it, anyway. It was worth the money, and I wished to oblige that man. He

accepted my two francs, and I began to feel better. Then he made a few

entries in something, handed me my _triptyque_, said "_Bonjour, et bon

voyage_," and I was done.

I could hardly believe it. I saw then what a nice face he had, while the

little fat man across the street was manifestly a lovely soul. He had

demanded not a thing but the number of the motor. Not even the number of

the car had interested him. As for the weight, the bore of the

cylinders, the number of the chassis, and all those other statistics

said to be required, they were as nonexistent to him as to me. Why, he

had not even asked us to unstrap our baggage. It was with feelings akin

to tenderness that we waved him good-by and glided across the imaginary

line of his frontier into Switzerland.

We glided very leisurely, however. "Everybody gets arrested in

Switzerland"--every stranger, that is--for breaking the speed laws.

This, at least, was our New York information. So we crept along, and I

kept my eye on the speedometer all the way through Geneva, for we were

not going to stop there at present, and when we had crossed our old

friend, the Rhone, variously bridged here, skirted the gay water-front

and were on the shore road of that loveliest of all lakes--Lake Leman,

with its blue water, its snow-capped mountains, its terraced vineyards,

we still loafed and watched the _gendarmes_ to see if they were timing

us, and came almost to a stop whenever an official of any kind hove in

sight. Also we used the mellow horn, for our book said that horns of the

Klaxon type are not allowed in Switzerland.

We were on soft pedal, you see, and some of the cars we met were equally

subdued. But we observed others that were not--cars that were just

bowling along in the old-fashioned way, and when these passed us, we

were surprised to find that they were not ignorant, strange cars, but

Swiss cars, or at least cars with Swiss number-plates and familiar with

the dangers. As for the whistles, they were honking and snorting and

screeching just as if they were in Connecticut, where there is no known

law that forbids anything except fishing on Sunday. Indeed, one of the

most sudden and violent horns I have ever heard overtook us just then,

and I nearly jumped over the windshield when it abruptly opened on me

from behind.

"Good G--, that is, goodness!" I said, "this is just like France!" and I

let out a few knots and tooted the Klaxonette, and was doing finely when

suddenly a mounted policeman appeared on the curve ahead. I could feel

myself scrouging as we passed, going with great deliberation. He did not

offer to molest me, but we did not hurry again--not right away. Not that

we cared to hurry; the picture landscape we were in was worth all the

time one could give it. Still, we were anxious to get to Lausanne before

dusk, and little by little we saw and heard things which convinced us

that "Everybody gets arrested in Switzerland" is a superstition, the

explosion of which was about due. Fully half the people we met, _all_

that passed us, could properly have been arrested anywhere. By the time

we reached Lausanne we should have been arrested ourselves.

Chapter XVII

SOME SWISS IMPRESSIONS

Now, when one has reached Switzerland, his inclination is not to go on

traveling, for a time at least, but to linger and enjoy certain

advantages. First, of course, there is the scenery; the lakes, the

terraced hills, and the snow-capped mountains; the chateaux, chalets,

and mossy villages; the old inns and brand-new, heaven-climbing hotels.

And then Switzerland is the land of the three F's--French, Food, and

Freedom, all attractive things. For Switzerland is the model republic,

without graft and without greed; its schools, whether public or private,

enjoy the patronage of all civilized lands, and as to the matter of

food, Switzerland is the _table d'hote_ of the world.

Swiss landlords are combined into a sort of trust, not, as would be the

case elsewhere, to keep prices up, but to keep prices down! It is the

result of wisdom, a far-seeing prudence which says: "Our scenery, our

climate, our pure water--these are our stock in trade. Our profit from

them is through the visitor. Wherefore we will encourage visitors with

good food, attractive accommodations, courtesy; and we will be content

with small profit from each, thus inviting a general, even if modest,

prosperity; also, incidentally, the cheerfulness and good will of our

patrons." It is a policy which calls for careful management, one that

has made hotel-keeping in Switzerland an exact science--a gift, in fact,

transmitted down the generations, a sort of magic; for nothing short of

magic could supply a spotless room, steam heated, with windows opening

upon the lake, and three meals--the evening meal a seven-course dinner

of the first order--all for six francs fifty (one dollar and thirty

cents) a day.[9]

It is a policy which prevails in other directions. Not all things are

cheap in Switzerland, but most things are--the things which one buys

oftenest--woolen clothing and food. Cotton goods are not cheap, for

Switzerland does not grow cotton, and there are a few other such items.

Shoes are cheap enough, if one will wear the Swiss make, but few

visitors like to view them on their own feet. They enjoy them most when

they hear them clattering along on the feet of Swiss children, the

wooden soles beating out a rhythmic measure that sounds like a coopers'

chorus. Not all Swiss shoes have wooden soles, but the others do not

gain grace by their absence.

Swiss cigars are also cheap. I am not a purist in cigars, but at home I

have smoked a good many and seldom with safety one that cost less than

ten cents, straight. One pays ten centimes, or two cents, in

Switzerland, and gets a mild, evenly burning article. I judge it is made

of tobacco, though the head of the family suggested other things that

she thought it smelled like. If she had smoked one of them, she would

not have noticed this peculiarity any more. Wine is cheap, of course,

for the hillsides are covered with vines; also, whisk--but I am

wandering into economic statistics without really meaning to do so. They

were the first things that impressed me.

The next, I believe, was the lack of Swiss politics. Switzerland is a

republic that runs with the exactness of a Swiss watch, its machinery as

hermetically concealed. I had heard that the Swiss Republic sets the

pattern of government for the world, and I was anxious to know something

of its methods and personnel. I was sorry that I was so ignorant. I

didn't even know the name of the Swiss President, and for a week was

ashamed to confess it. I was hoping I might see it in one of the French

papers I puzzled over every evening. But at the end of the week I

timidly and apologetically inquired of our friendly landlord as to the

name of the Swiss Chief Executive.

But then came a shock. Our landlord grew confused, blushed, and

confessed that he didn't know it, either! He had known it, he said, of

course, but it had slipped his mind. Slipped his mind! Think of the name

of Roosevelt, or Wilson, or Taft slipping the mind of anybody in

America--and a landlord! I asked the man who sold me cigars. He had

forgotten, too. I asked the apothecary, but got no information. I was

not so timid after that. I asked a fellow passenger--guest, I mean, an

American, but of long Swiss residence--and got this story. I believe

most of it. He said:

"When I came to Switzerland and found out what a wonderful little

country it was, its government so economical, so free from party

corruption and spoils, from graft and politics, so different from the

home life of our own dear Columbia, I thought, 'The man at the head of

this thing must be a master hand; I'll find out his name.' So I picked

out a bright-looking subject, and said:

"'What is the name of the Swiss President?'

"He tried to pretend he didn't understand my French, but he did, for I

can tear the language off all right--learned it studying art in Paris.

When I pinned him down, he said he knew the name well enough,

_parfaitement_, but couldn't think of it at that moment.

"That was a surprise, but I asked the next man. He couldn't think of it,

either. Then I asked a police officer. Of course he knew it, all right;

'_oh oui, certainement, mais_'--then he scratched his head and

scowled, but he couldn't dig up that name. He was just a plain

prevaricator--_toute simplement_--like the others. I asked every man I

met, and every one of them knew it, had it right on the end of his

tongue; but somehow it seemed to stick there. Not a man in Vevey or

Montreux could tell me the name of the Swiss President. It was the same

in Fribourg, the same even in Berne, the capital. I had about given it

up when one evening, there in Berne, I noticed a sturdy man with an

honest face, approaching. He looked intelligent, too, and as a last

resort I said:

"'Could you, by any chance, tell me the name of the Swiss President?'

"The effect was startling. He seized me by the arm and, after looking

up and down the street, leaned forward and whispered in my ear:

"_'Mon Dieu! c'est moi!_ _I_ am the Swiss President; but--ah _non_,

don't tell anyone! I am the only man in Switzerland who knows it!'

"You see," my friend continued, "he is elected privately, no torchlight

campaigns, no scandal, and only for a year. He is only a sort of

chairman, though of course his work is important, and the present able

incumbent has been elected a number of times. His name is--is--is--ah

yes, that's my tram. So sorry to have to hurry away. See you to-night at

dinner."

One sees a good many nationalities in Switzerland, and some of them I

soon learned to distinguish. When I saw a man with a dinky Panama hat

pulled down about his face, and wearing a big black mustache or beard, I

knew he was a Frenchman. When I met a stout, red-faced man, with a pack

on his back and with hobnailed shoes, short trousers, and a little felt

hat with a feather stuck in it, I knew him for a German. When I noticed

a very carefully dressed person, with correct costume and gaiters--also

monocle, if perfect--saying, "Aw--Swiss people--so queah, don't you

know," I was pretty sure he was an Englishman. When I remarked a tall,

limber person, carrying a copy of the Paris _Herald_ and asking every

other person he met, "Hey, there! Vooly voo mir please sagen--" all the

rest incomprehensible, I knew him for an American of the deepest dye.

The Swiss themselves have no such distinguishing mark. They are just

sturdy, plainly dressed, unpretentious people, polite and friendly,

with a look of capability, cleanliness, and honesty which invites

confidence.

An Englishwoman said to me:

"I have heard that the Swiss are the best governed and the least

intelligent people in the world."

I reflected on this. It had a snappy sound, but it somehow did not seem

to be firm at the joints. "The best governed and the least

intelligent"--there was something drunken about it. I said:

"It doesn't quite seem to fit. And how about the magnificent Swiss

public-school system, and the manufacturing, and the national railway,

with all the splendid engineering that goes with the building of the

funiculars and tunnels? And the Swiss prosperity, and the medical

practice, and the sciences? I always imagined those things were in some

way connected with intelligence."

"Oh, well," she said, "I suppose they do go with intelligence of a kind;

but then, of course, you know what I mean."

But I was somehow too dull for her epigram. It didn't seem to have any

sense in it. She was a grass widow and I think she made it herself.

Later she asked me whereabouts in America I came from. When I said

Connecticut, she asked if Connecticut was as big as Lausanne. A woman

like that ought to go out of the epigram business.[10]

As a matter of fact, a good many foreigners are inclined to say rather

peevish things about sturdy little, thriving little, happy little

Switzerland. I rather suspect they are a bit jealous of the

pocket-de-luxe nation that shelters them, and feeds them, and entertains

them, and cures them, cheaper and better and kindlier than their home

countries. They are willing to enjoy these advantages, but they

acknowledge rather grudgingly that Switzerland, without a great standing

army, a horde of grafters, or a regiment of tariff millionaires to

support, can give lessons in national housekeeping to their own larger,

more pretentious lands.

I would not leave the impression, by the way, that the Swiss are

invariably prosperous. Indeed, some of them along the lake must have

been very poor just then, for the grape crop had failed two years in

succession, and with many of them their vineyard is their all. But there

was no outward destitution, no rags, no dirt, no begging. Whatever his

privation, the Swiss does not wear his poverty on his sleeve.

Switzerland has two other official languages besides French--German and

Italian. Government documents, even the postal cards, are printed in

these three languages. It would seem a small country for three

well-developed tongues, besides all the canton dialects, some of which

go back to the old Romanic, and are quite distinct from anything modern.

The French, German, and Italian divisions are geographical, the lines of

separation pretty distinct. There is rivalry among the cantons, a

healthy rivalry, in matters of progress and education. The cantons are

sufficiently a unit on all national questions, and together they form

about as compact and sturdy a little nation as the world has yet

seen--a nation the size and shape of an English walnut, and a hard nut

for any would-be aggressor to crack. There are not many entrances into

Switzerland, and they would be very well defended. The standing army is

small, but every Swiss is subject to a call to arms, and is trained by

enforced, though brief, service to their use. He seems by nature to be

handy with a rifle, and never allows himself to be out of practice.

There are regular practice meets every Sunday, and I am told the

government supplies the cartridges. Boys organize little companies and

regiments and this the government also encourages. It is said that

Switzerland could put half a million soldiers in the field, and that

every one would be a crack shot.[11] The German Kaiser, once reviewing

the Swiss troops, remarked, casually, to a sub-officer, "You say you

could muster half a million soldiers?"

"Yes, Your Majesty."

"And suppose I should send a million of my soldiers against you. What

would you do then?"

"We should fire two shots apiece, Your Majesty."

[Illustration: MARCHE VEVEY

"IN EACH TOWN THERE IS AN OPEN SQUARE, WHICH TWICE A WEEK IS

PICTURESQUELY CROWDED"]

In every Swiss town there are regular market days, important events

where one may profitably observe the people. The sale of vegetables and

flowers must support many families. In each town there is an open

square, which twice a week is picturesquely crowded, and there one may

buy everything to eat and many things to wear; also, the wherewith to

improve the home, the garden, and even the mind; for besides the

garden things there are stalls of second-hand books, hardware,

furniture, and general knick-knacks. Flanking the streets are displays

of ribbons, laces, hats, knitted things, and general dry-goods

miscellany; also antiques, the scrapings of many a Swiss cupboard and

corner.

But it is in the open square itself that the greater market

blooms--really blooms, for, in season, the vegetables are truly floral

in their rich vigor, and among them are pots and bouquets of the posies

that the Swiss, like all Europeans, so dearly love. Most of the flower

and vegetable displays are down on the ground, arranged in baskets or on

bits of paper, and form a succession of gay little gardens, ranged in

long narrow avenues of color and movement, a picture of which we do not

grow weary. Nor of the setting--the quaint tile-roofed buildings; the

blue lake, with its sails and swans and throng of wheeling gulls; the

green hills; the lofty snow-capped mountains that look down from every

side. How many sights those ancient peaks have seen on this same

square!--markets and military, battles and buffoonery. There are no

battles to-day, but the Swiss cadets use it for a drill ground, and

every little while lightsome shows and merry-go-rounds establish

themselves in one end of it, and the little people skip about, and go

riding around and around to the latest ragtime, while the mountains look

down with their large complaisance, just as they watched the capering

ancestors of these small people, ages and ages ago; just as they will

watch their light-footed descendants for a million years, maybe.

The market is not confined entirely to the square. On its greater days,

when many loads of wood and hay crowd one side of it, it overflows into

the streets. Around a floral fountain may be found butter, eggs, and

cheese--oh, especially cheese, the cheese of Gruyere, with every size

and pattern of holes, in any quantity, cut and weighed by a handsome

apple-faced woman who seems the living embodiment of the cheese

industry. I have heard it said--this was in America--that the one thing

not to be obtained in Switzerland is Swiss cheese. The person who

conceived that smartness belongs with the one who invented the

"intelligence" epigram.

On the market days before Christmas our square had a different look. The

little displays were full of greenery, and in the center of the market

place there had sprung up a forest of Christmas trees. They were not in

heaps, lying flat; but each, mounted on a neat tripod stand, stood

upright, as if planted there. They made a veritable Santa Claus forest,

and the gayly dressed young people walking among them, looking and

selecting, added to this pretty sight.

The Swiss make much of Christmas. Their shop windows are overflowing

with decorations and attractive things. Vevey is "Chocolate Town." Most

of the great chocolate factories of Europe are there, and at all holiday

seasons the grocery and confectionary windows bear special evidence of

this industry. Chocolate Santa Clauses--very large--chickens, rabbits,

and the like--life size; also trees, groups, set pieces, ornaments--the

windows are wildernesses of the rich brown confection, all so

skillfully modeled and arranged.

The toy windows, too, are fascinating. You would know at once that you

were looking into a Swiss toy window, from the variety of carved bears;

also, from the toy chateaux--very fine and large, with walled courts,

portcullises, and battlements--with which the little Swiss lad plays

war. The dolls are different, too, and the toy books--all in French. But

none of these things were as interesting as the children standing

outside, pointing at them and discussing them--so easily, so glibly--in

French. How little they guessed my envy of them--how gladly I would buy

out that toy window for, say, seven dollars, and trade it to them for

their glib unconsciousness of gender and number and case.

On the afternoon before Christmas the bells began. From the high

mountainsides, out of deep ravines that led back into the hinterland,

came the ringing. The hills seemed full of bells--a sound that must go

echoing from range to range, to the north and to the south, traveling

across Europe with the afternoon. Then, on Christmas Day, the trees. In

every home and school and hotel they sparkled. We attended four in the

course of the day, one, a very gorgeous one in the lofty festooned hall

of a truly grand hotel, with tea served and soft music stealing from

some concealed place--a slow strain of the "Tannenbaum," which is like

our "Maryland," only more beautiful--and seemed to come from a source

celestial. And when one remembered that in every corner of Europe

something of the kind was going on, and that it was all done in memory

and in honor of One who, along dusty roadsides and in waste places,

taught the doctrine of humility, one wondered if the world might not be

worth saving, after all.

FOOTNOTES:

[9] In 1913-14. The rate to-day is somewhat higher.

[10] I have thought since that she may have meant that the Swiss do not

lead the world in the art and literary industries. She may have

connected those things with intelligence--you never can tell.

[11] When the call to arms came, August 1, 1914, Switzerland put 250,000

men on her frontier in twenty-four hours.

Chapter XVIII

THE LITTLE TOWN OF VEVEY

It would seem to be the French cantons along the Lake of Geneva (or

Leman) that most attract the deliberate traveler. The north shore of

this lake is called the Swiss Riviera, for it has a short, mild winter,

with quick access to the mountaintops. But perhaps it is the schools,

the _pensionnats_, that hold the greater number. The whole shore of the

Lake of Geneva is lined with them, and they are filled with young

persons of all ages and nations, who are there mainly to learn French,

though incidentally, through that lingual medium, other knowledge is

acquired. Some, indeed, attend the fine public schools, where the drill

is very thorough, even severe. Parents, as well as children, generally

attend school in Switzerland--visiting parents, I mean. They undertake

French, which is the thing to do, like mountain climbing and winter

sports. Some buy books and seclude their struggles; others have private

lessons; still others openly attend one of the grown-up language

schools, or try to find board at French-speaking _pensions_. Their

progress and efforts form the main topic of conversation. In a way it

makes for a renewal of youth.

We had rested at Vevey, that quiet, clean little picture-city, not so

busy and big as Lausanne, or so grand and stylish as Montreux, but more

peaceful than either, and, being more level, better adapted for motor

headquarters. Off the main street at Montreux, the back or the front

part of a car is always up in the air, and it has to be chained to the

garage. We found a level garage in Vevey, and picked out _pensionnats_

for Narcissa and the Joy, and satisfactory quarters for ourselves.

Though still warm and summer-like, it was already late autumn by the

calendar, and not a time for long motor adventures. We would see what a

Swiss winter was like. We would wrestle with the French idiom. We would

spend the months face to face with the lake, the high-perched hotels and

villages, the snow-capped, cloud-capped hills.

Probably everybody has heard of Vevey, but perhaps there are still some

who do not know it by heart, and will be glad of a word or two of

details. Vevey has been a place of habitation for a long time. A

wandering Asian tribe once came down that way, rested a hundred years or

so along the Leman shore, then went drifting up the Rhone and across the

Simplon to make trouble for Rome. But perhaps there was no Rome then; it

was a long time ago, and it did not leave any dates, only a few bronze

implements and trifles to show the track of the storm. The Helvetians

came then, sturdy and warlike, and then the Romans, who may have

preserved traditions of the pleasant land from that first wandering

tribe.

Caesar came marching down the Rhone and along this waterside, and his

followers camped in the Vevey neighborhood a good while--about four

centuries, some say. Certain rich Romans built their summer villas in

Switzerland, and the lake shore must have had its share. But if there

were any at Vevey, there is no very positive trace of them now. In the

depths of the Castle of Chillon, they show you Roman construction in the

foundations, but that may have been a fortress.

I am forgetting, however. One day, when we had been there a month or

two, and were clawing up the steep hill--Mount Pelerin--that rises back

of the hotel to yet other hotels, and to compact little villages, we

strayed into a tiny lane just below Chardonne, and came to a stone

watering trough, or fountain, under an enormous tree. Such troughs, with

their clear, flowing water, are plentiful enough, but this one had a

feature all its own. The stone upright which held the flowing spout had

not been designed for that special purpose. It was, in fact, the upper

part of a small column, capital and all, very old and mended, and

_distinctly of Roman design_. I do not know where it came from, and I do

not care to inquire too deeply, for I like to think it is a fragment of

one of those villas that overlooked the Lake of Geneva long ago.

There are villas enough about the lake to-day, and chateaux by the

dozen, most of the latter begun in the truculent Middle Ages and

continued through the centuries down to within a hundred years or so

ago. You cannot walk or drive in any direction without coming to them,

some in ruins, but most of them well preserved or carefully restored,

and habitable; some, like beautiful Blonay, holding descendants of

their ancient owners. From the top of our hotel, with a glass, one could

pick out as many as half a dozen, possibly twice that number. They were

just towers of defense originally, the wings and other architectural

excursions being added as peace and prosperity and family life

increased. One very old and handsome one, la Tour de Peilz, now gives

its name to a part of Vevey, though in the old days it is said that

venomous little wars used to rage between Vevey proper and the village

which clustered about the chateau de Peilz. Readers of _Little Women_

will remember la Tour de Peilz, for it was along its lake wall that

Laurie proposed to Amy.

But a little way down the lake there is a more celebrated chateau than

la Tour de Peilz; the chateau of Chillon, which Byron's poem of the

prisoner Bonivard has made familiar for a hundred years.[12] Chillon,

which stands not exactly on the lake, but on a rock _in_ the lake, has

not preserved the beginning of its history. Those men of the bronze age

camped there, and, if the evidences shown are genuine, the Romans built

a part of the foundation. Also, in one of its lower recesses there are

the remains of a rude altar of sacrifice.

It is a fascinating place. You cross a little drawbridge, and through a

heavy gateway enter a guardroom and pass to a pretty open court, where

to-day there are vines and blooming flowers. Then you descend to the big

barrack room, a hall of ponderous masonry, pass through a small room,

with its perfectly black cell below for the condemned, through another,

where a high gibbet-beam still remains, and into a spacious corridor of

pillars called now the "Prison of Bonivard."

There are seven pillars of gothic mold

In Chillon's dungeons deep and old;...

Dim with a dull imprisoned ray,

A sunbeam which has lost its way ...

And in each pillar there is a ring

And in each ring there is a chain.

That iron is a cankering thing,

For in these limbs its teeth remain....

Bonivard's ring is still there, and the rings of his two brothers who

were chained, one on each side of him; chained, as he tells us, so

rigidly that

We could not move a single pace;

We could not see each other's face.

We happened to be there, once, when a sunbeam that "had lost its way"

came straying in, a larger sunbeam now, for the narrow slits that serve

for windows were even narrower in Bonivard's time, and the place, light

enough to-day in pleasant weather, was then somber, damp, and probably

unclean.

Bonivard was a Geneva patriot, a political prisoner of the Duke of

Savoy, who used Chillon as his chateau. Bonivard lived six years in

Chillon, most of the time chained to a column, barely able to move,

having for recreation shrieks from the torture chamber above, or the

bustle of execution from the small adjoining cell. How he lived, how his

reason survived, are things not to be understood. Both his brothers

died, and at last Bonivard was allowed more liberty. The poem tells us

that he made a footing in the wall, and climbed up to look out on the

mountains and blue water, and a little island of three trees, and the

"white-walled distant town"--Bouveret, across the lake. He was delivered

by the Bernese in 1536, regaining his freedom with a sigh, according to

the poem. Yet he survived many years, dying in 1570, at the age of

seventy-four.

On the columns in Bonivard's dungeon many names are carved, some of them

the greatest in modern literary history. Byron's is there, Victor

Hugo's, Shelley's, and others of the sort. They are a tribute to the

place and its history, of course, but even more to Bonivard--the

Bonivard of Byron.

Prisoners of many kinds have lived and died in the dungeons of

Chillon--heretics, witches, traitors, poor relations--persons

inconvenient for one reason or another--it was a vanishing point for the

duke's undesirables, who, after the execution, were weighted and dropped

out a little door that opens directly to an almost measureless depth of

blue uncomplaining water. Right overhead is the torture chamber, with

something ghastly in its very shape and color, the central post still

bearing marks of burning-irons and clawing steel. Next to this chamber

is the hall of justice, and then the splendid banquet hall; everything

handy, you see, so that when the duke had friends, and the wine had been

good, and he was feeling particularly well, he could say, "Let's go in

and torture a witch"; or, if the hour was late and time limited, "Now

we'll just step down and hang a heretic to go to bed on." The duke's

bedroom, by the way, was right over the torture chamber. I would give

something for that man's conscience.

One might go on for pages about Chillon, but it has been told in detail

so many times. It is the pride to-day of this shore--pictures of it are

in every window--postal cards of it abound. Yet, somehow one never grows

tired of it, and stops to look at every new one.

For a thousand years, at least, Chillon was the scene of all the phases

of feudalism and chivalry; its history is that of the typical castle;

architecturally it is probably as good an example as there is in

Switzerland. It has been celebrated by other authors besides Byron. Jean

Jacques Rousseau has it in his _Nouvelle Heloise_, Hugo in _Le Rhin_,

and it has been pictured more or less by most of the writing people who

have found their way to Leman's pleasant shore. These have been legion.

The Vevey and Montreux neighborhood has been always a place for poor but

honest authors. Rousseau was at Vevey in 1732, and lodged at the Hotel

of the Key, and wrote of it in his _Confessions_, though he would seem

to have behaved very well there. The building still stands, and bears a

tablet with a medallion portrait of Rousseau and an extract in which he

says that Vevey has won his heart. In his _Confessions_ he advises all

persons of taste to go to Vevey, and speaks of the beauty and majesty of

the spectacle from its shore.

When Lord Byron visited Lake Leman he lodged in Clarens, between Vevey

and Montreux, and a tablet now identifies the house. Voltaire also

visited here, lodging unknown. Dumas the elder was in Vevey in the

thirties of the last century, and wrote a book about Switzerland--a book

of extraordinary interest, full of duels, earthquakes, and other

startling things, worthy of the author of _Monte Cristo_ and _The Three

Musketeers_. Switzerland was not so closely reported in those days; an

imagination like Dumas' had more range. Thackeray wrote a portion of the

_Newcomes_ at the hotel Trois Couronnes in Vevey, and it was on the wide

terrace of the same gay hostelry that Henry James's _Daisy Miller_ had

her parasol scene. We have already mentioned Laurie and Amy on the wall

of Tour de Peilz, and one might go on citing literary associations of

this neighborhood. Perhaps it would be easier to say that about every

author who has visited the continent has paused for a little time at

Vevey, a statement which would apply to travelers in general.

Vevey is not a great city; it is only a picturesque city, with curious,

winding streets of constantly varying widths, and irregular little open

spaces, all very clean, also very misleading when one wishes to go

anywhere with direction and dispatch. You give that up, presently. You

do not try to save time by cutting through. When you do, you arrive in

some new little rectangle or confluence, with a floral fountain in the

middle, and neat little streets winding away to nowhere in particular;

then all at once you are back where you started. In this, as in some

other points of resemblance, Vevey might be called the Boston of

Switzerland. Not that I pretend to a familiarity with Boston--nobody has

that--but I have an aunt who lives there, and every time I go to see her

I am obliged to start in a different direction for her house, though she

claims to have been living in the same place for thirty years. Some

people think Boston is built on a turn-table. I don't know; it sounds

reasonable.

To come back to Vevey--it is growing--not in the wild, woolly, New York,

Chicago, and Western way, but in a very definite and substantial way.

They are building new houses for business and residence, solid

structures of stone and cement, built, like the old ones, to withstand

time. They do not build flimsy fire-traps in Switzerland. Whatever the

class of the building, the roofs are tile, the staircases are stone. We

always seem to court destruction in our American residential

architecture. We cover our roofs with inflammable shingles to invite

every spark, and build our stairways of nice dry pine, so that in the

event of fire they will be the first thing to go. This encourages

practice in jumping out of top-story windows.

By day Vevey is a busy, prosperous-looking, though unhurried, place, its

water-front gay with visitors; evening comes and glorifies the lake into

wine, turns to rose the snow on _Grammont_, the _Dents de Midi_, and the

_Dents de Morcles_. As to the sunset itself, not many try to paint it

any more. Once, from our little balcony we saw a monoplane pass up the

lake and float into the crimson west, like a great moth or bird. Night

in Vevey is full of light and movement, but not of noise. There is no

wild clatter of voices and outbursts of nothing in particular, such as

characterize the towns of Italy and southern France. On the hilltops

back of Vevey the big hotels are lighted, and sometimes, following the

dimmer streets, we looked up to what is apparently a city in the sky,

suggesting one's old idea of the New Jerusalem, a kind of vision of

heaven, as it were--heaven at night, I mean.

FOOTNOTES:

[12] Written at the Anchor Inn, Ouchy, Lausanne, in 1817.

Chapter XIX

MASHING A MUD GUARD

One does not motor a great deal in the immediate vicinity of Vevey; the

hills are not far enough away for that. One may make short trips to

Blonay, and even up Pelerin, if he is fond of stiff climbing, and there

are wandering little roads that thread cozy orchard lands and lead to

secluded villages tucked away in what seem forgotten corners of a bygone

time. But the highway skirts the lake-front and leads straight away

toward Geneva, or up the Rhone Valley past Martigny toward the Simplon

Pass. It has always been a road, and in its time has been followed by

some of the greatest armies the world has ever seen--the troops of

Caesar, of Charlemagne, of Napoleon.

We were not to be without our own experience in motor mountain climbing.

We did not want it or invite it; it was thrust upon us. We were

returning from Martigny late one Sunday afternoon, expecting to reach

Vevey for dinner. It was pleasant and we did not hurry. We could not, in

fact, for below Villeneuve we fell in with the homing cows, and traveled

with attending herds--beside us, before us, behind us--fat, sleek,

handsome animals, an escort which did not permit of haste. Perhaps it

was avoiding them that caused our mistake; at any rate, we began to

realize presently that we were not on our old road. Still, we seemed

headed in the right direction and we kept on. Then presently we were

climbing a hill--climbing by a narrow road, one that did not permit of

turning around.

Very well, we said, it could not be very high or steep; we would go over

the hill. But that was a wrong estimate. The hill was high and it was

steep. Up and up and up on second speed, then back to first, until we

were getting on a level with the clouds themselves. It was a good road

of its kind, but it had no end. The water was boiling in the

radiator--boiling over. We must stop to reduce temperature a little and

to make inquiries. It was getting late--far too late to attempt an

ascension of the Alps.

We were on a sort of bend, and there was a peasant chalet a few rods

ahead. I went up there, and from a little old woman in short skirts got

a tub of cool water, also some information. The water cooled off our

engine, and the information our enthusiasm for further travel in that

direction. We were on the road to Chateau d'Oex, a hilltop resort for

winter sports.

We were not in a good place to turn around, there on the edge of a

semi-precipice, but we managed to do it, and started back. It was a

steep descent. I cut off the spark and put the engine on low speed,

which made it serve as a brake, but it required the foot and emergency

brake besides. It would have been a poor place to let the car get away.

Then I began to worry for fear the hind wheels were sliding, which would

quickly cut through the tires. I don't know why I thought I could see

them, for mud guards make that quite impossible. Nevertheless I leaned

out and looked back. It was a poor place to do that, too. We were

hugging a wall as it was, and one does not steer well looking backward.

In five seconds we gouged into the wall, and the front guard on that

side crumpled up like a piece of tinfoil. I had to get out and pull and

haul it before there was room for the wheel to turn.

I never felt so in disgrace in my life. I couldn't look at anything but

the disfigured guard all the way down the mountain. The passengers were

sorry and tried to say comforting things, but that guard was fairly

shrieking its reproach. What a thing to go home with! I felt that I

could never live it down.

Happily it was dark by the time we found the right road and were drawing

into Montreux--dark and raining. I was glad it was dark, but the rain

did not help, and I should have been happier if the streets had not been

full of dodging pedestrians and vehicles and blinding lights. The

streets of Montreux are narrow enough at best, and what with a busy tram

and all the rest of the medley, driving, for a man already in disgrace,

was not real recreation. A railway train passed us just below, and I

envied the engineer his clear right of way and fenced track, and decided

that his job was an easy one by comparison. One used to hear a good deal

about the dangers of engine driving, and no doubt an engineer would be

glad to turn to the right or left now and then when meeting a train head

on--a thing, however, not likely to happen often, though I suppose once

is about enough. All the same, a straight, fenced and more or less

exclusive track has advantages, and I wished I had one, plunging,

weaving, diving through the rain as we were, among pedestrians,

cyclists, trams, carriages, other motors, and the like; misled by the

cross lights from the shops, dazzled by oncoming headlights, blinded by

rain splashing in one's face.

It is no great distance from Montreux to Vevey, but in that night it

seemed interminable. And what a relief at last were Vevey's quiet

streets, what a path of peace the semi-private road to the hotel, what a

haven of bliss the seclusion of the solid little garage! Next morning

before anybody was astir I got the car with that maltreated mud guard to

the shop. It was an awful-looking thing. It had a real expression. It

looked as if it were going to cry. I told the repair man that the roads

had been wet and the car had skidded into a wall. He did not care how it

happened, of course, but I did; besides, it was easier to explain it

that way in French.

It took a week to repair the guard. I suppose they had to straighten it

out with a steam roller. I don't know, but it looked new and fine when

it came back, and I felt better. The bill was sixteen francs. I never

got so much disgrace before at such a reasonable figure.

Chapter XX

JUST FRENCH--THAT'S ALL

Perhaps one should report progress in learning French. Of course

Narcissa and the Joy were chattering it in a little while. That is the

way of childhood. It gives no serious consideration to a great matter

like that, but just lightly accepts it like a new game or toy and plays

with it about as readily. It is quite different with a thoughtful person

of years and experience. In such case there is need of system and

strategy. I selected different points of assault and began the attack

from all of them at once--private lessons; public practice; daily

grammar, writing and reading in seclusion; readings aloud by persons of

patience and pronunciation.

I hear of persons picking up a language--grown persons, I mean--but if

there are such persons they are not of my species. The only sort of

picking up I do is the kind that goes with a shovel. I am obliged to

excavate a language--to loosen up its materials, then hoist them with a

derrick. My progress is geological and unhurried. Still, I made

progress, of a kind, and after putting in five hours a day for a period

of months I began to have a sense of results. I began to realize that

even in a rapid-fire conversation the sounds were not all exactly alike,

and to distinguish scraps of meaning in conversations not aimed

directly at me, with hard and painful distinctness. I began even to

catch things from persons passing on the street--to distinguish French

from patois--that is to say, I knew, when I understood any of it, that

it was not patois. I began to be proud and to take on airs--always a

dangerous thing.

One day at the pharmacy I heard two well-dressed men speaking. I

listened intently, but could not catch a word. When they went I said to

the drug clerk--an Englishman who spoke French:

"Strange that those well-dressed men should use patois."

He said: "Ah, but that was not patois--that was very choice

French--Parisian."

I followed those men the rest of the afternoon, at a safe distance, but

in earshot, and we thus visited in company most of the shops and sights

of Vevey. If I could have followed them for a few months in that way it

is possible--not likely, but possible--that their conversation might

have meant something to me.

Which, by the way, suggests the chief difference between an acquired and

an inherited language. An acquired language, in time, comes to _mean_

something, whereas the inherited language _is_ something. It is bred

into the fiber of its possessor. It is not a question of considering the

meaning of words--what they convey; they do not come stumbling through

any anteroom of thought, they are embodied facts, forms, sentiments,

leaping from one inner consciousness to another, instantaneously and

without friction. Probably every species of animation, from the atom to

the elephant, has a language--perfectly understood and sufficient to its

needs--some system of signs, or sniffs, or grunts, or barks, or

vibrations to convey quite as adequately as human speech the necessary

facts and conditions of life. Persons, wise and otherwise, will tell you

that animals have no language; but when a dog can learn even many words

of his master's tongue, it seems rather unkind to deny to him one of his

own. Because the oyster does not go shouting around, or annoy us with

his twaddle, does not mean that he is deprived of life's lingual

interchanges. It is not well to deny speech to the mute, inglorious

mollusk. Remember he is our ancestor.

To go back to French: I have acquired, with time and heavy effort, a

sort of next-room understanding of that graceful speech--that is to say,

it is about like English spoken by some one beyond a partition--a fairly

thick one. By listening closely I get the general drift of

conversation--a confusing drift sometimes, mismeanings that generally go

with eavesdropping. At times, however, the partition seems to be

thinner, and there comes the feeling that if somebody would just come

along and open a door between I should understand.

It is truly a graceful speech--the French tongue. Plain, homely things

of life--so bald, and bare, and disheartening in the Anglo-Saxon--are

less unlovely in the French. Indeed, the French word for "rags" is so

pretty that we have conferred "chiffon" on one of our daintiest fabrics.

But in the grace of the language lies also its weakness. It does not

rise to the supreme utterances. I have been reading the bible texts on

the tombstones in the little cemetery of Chardonne. "_L'eternel est mon

berger_" can hardly rank in loftiness with "The Lord is my shepherd,"

nor "_Que votre coeur ne se trouble point_" with "Let not your heart

be troubled." Or, at any rate, I can never bring myself to think so.

Any language is hard enough to learn--bristling with difficulties which

seem needless, even offensively silly to the student. We complain of the

genders and silent letters of the French, but when one's native tongue

spells "cough" and calls it "cof," "rough" and calls it "ruff," "slough"

and calls it "slu" or "sluff," by choice, and "plough" and is unable to

indicate adequately without signs just how it should be pronounced, he

is not in a position to make invidious comparisons. I wonder what a

French student really thinks of those words. He has rules for his own

sound variations, and carefully indicates them with little signs. We

have sound signs, too, but an English page printed with all the

necessary marks is a cause for anguish. I was once given a primary

reader printed in that way, and at sight of it ran screaming to my

mother. So we leave off all signs in English and trust in God for

results. It is hard to be an American learning French, but I would

rather be that than a Frenchman learning American.

Chapter XXI

WE LUGE

When winter comes in America, with a proper and sufficient thickness of

ice, a number of persons--mainly young people--go out skating, or

coasting, or sleighing, and have a very good time. But this interest is

incidental--it does not exclude all other interests--it does not even

provide the main topic of conversation.

It is not like that in Switzerland. Winter sport is a religion in

Switzerland; the very words send a thrill through the dweller--native or

foreign--among the Swiss hills. When the season of white drift and

congealed lake takes possession of the land, other interests and

industries are put aside for the diversions of winter.

Everything is subserved to the winter sports. French, German, and

English papers report each day the thickness of snow at the various

resorts, the conditions of the various courses, the program of events.

Bills at the railway stations announce the names of points where the

sports are in progress, with a schedule of the fares. Hotels publish

their winter attractions--their coasting (they call it "luging"--soft

g), curling, skating, ski-ing accommodations, and incidentally mention

their rooms. They also cover their hall carpetings with canvas to

protect them from the lugers' ponderous hobnailed shoes. To be truly

sporty one must wear those shoes; also certain other trimmings, such as

leggings, breeches, properly cut coat, cap and scarf to match. One

cannot really enjoy the winter sports without these decorations, or keep

in good winter society. Then there are the skis. One must carry a pair

of skis to be complete. They must be as tall as the owner can reach, and

when he puts them on his legs will branch out and act independently,

each on its own account, and he will become a house divided against

itself, with the usual results. So it is better to carry them, and look

handsome and graceful, and to confine one's real activities to the more

familiar things.

Our hotel was divided on winter sports. Not all went in for it, but

those who did went in considerably. We had a Dutch family from Sumatra,

where they had been tobacco planting for a number of years, and in that

tropic land had missed the white robust joys of the long frost. They

were a young, superb couple, but their children, who had never known the

cold, were slender products of an enervating land. They had never seen

snow and they shared their parents' enthusiasm in the winter prospect.

The white drifts on the mountaintops made them marvel; the first light

fall we had made them wild.

That Dutch family went in for the winter sports. You never saw anything

like it. Their plans and their outfit became the chief interest of the

hotel. They engaged far in advance their rooms at Chateau d'Oex, one of

the best known resorts, and they daily accumulated new and startling

articles of costume to make their experience more perfect. One day they

would all have new shoes of wonderful thickness and astonishing nails.

Then it would be gorgeous new scarfs and caps, then sweaters, then

skates, then snowshoes, then skis, and so on down the list. Sometimes

they would organize a drill in full uniform. But the children were less

enthusiastic then. Those slim-legged little folks could hardly walk,

weighted with several pounds of heavy hobnailed shoes, and they

complained bitterly at this requirement. Their parents did not miss the

humor of the situation, and I think enjoyed these preparations and

incidental discomforts for the sake of pleasure as much as they could

have enjoyed the sports themselves, when the time came. We gave them a

hearty send-off, when reports arrived that the snow conditions at

Chateau d'Oex were good, and if they had as good a time as we wished

them, and as they gave us in their preparations, they had nothing to

regret.

As the winter deepened the winter sport sentiment grew in our midst,

until finally in January we got a taste of it ourselves. We found that

we could take a little mountain road to a point in the hills called Les

Avants, then a funicular to a still higher point, and thus be in the

white whirl for better or worse, without being distinctly of it, so to

speak. We could not be of it, of course, without the costumes, and we

did not see how we could afford these and also certain new adjuncts

which the car would need in the spring. So we went primarily as

spectators--that is, the older half of the family. The children had

their own winter sports at school.

[Illustration: "YOU CAN SEE SON LOUP FROM THE HOTEL STEPS IN VEVEY, BUT

IT TAKES HOURS TO GET TO IT"]

We telephoned to the Son Loup hotel at the top of the last funicular,

and got an early start. You can see Son Loup from the hotel steps in

Vevey, but it takes hours to get to it. The train goes up, and up, along

gorges and abysses, where one looks down on the tops of Christmas trees,

gloriously mantled in snow. Then by and by you are at Les Avants and in

the midst of everything, except the ski-ing, which is still higher up,

at Son Loup.

We got off at Les Avants and picked our way across the main street among

flying sleds of every pattern, from the single, sturdy little bulldog

_luge_ to the great polly-straddle bob, and from the safe vantage of a

cafe window observed the slide.

It was divided into three parts--one track for bobsledders--the wild

riders--a track for the more daring single riders, and a track for fat

folks, old folks, and children. Certainly they were having a good time.

Their ages ranged from five to seventy-five, and they were all children

together. Now and then there came gliding down among them a big native

sled, loaded with hay or wood, from somewhere far up in the hills. It

was a perfect day--no cold, no wind, no bright sun, for in reality we

were up in the clouds--a soft white veil of vapor was everywhere.

By and by we crossed the track, entered a wonderful snow garden

belonging to a hotel, and came to a little pond where some old men and

fat men were curling. Curling is a game where you try to drive a sort of

stone decoy duck from one end of the pond to the other and make it

stop somewhere and count something. Each man is armed with a big broom

to keep the ice clean before and after his little duck. We watched them

a good while and I cannot imagine anything more impressive than to see a

fat old man with a broom padding and puffing along by the side of his

little fat stone duck, feverishly sweeping the snow away in front of it,

so that it will get somewhere and count. When I inadvertently laughed I

could see that I was not popular. All were English there--all but a few

Americans who pretended to be English.

Beyond the curling pond was a skating pond, part of it given over to an

international hockey match, but somehow these things did not excite us.

We went back to our cafe corner to watch the luging and to have

luncheon. Then the lugers came stamping in for refreshments, and their

costumes interested us. Especially their shoes. Even the Dutch family

had brought home no such wonders as some of these. They were of

appalling size, and some of them had heavy iron claws or toes such as

one might imagine would belong to some infernal race. These, of course,

were to dig into the snow behind, to check or guide the flying sled.

They were useful, no doubt, but when one saw them on the feet of a tall,

slim girl the effect was peculiar.

By the time we had finished luncheon we had grown brave. We said we

would luge--modestly, but with proper spirit. There were sleds to let,

by an old Frenchman, at a little booth across the way, and we looked

over his assortment and picked a small bob with a steering attachment,

because to guide that would be like driving a car. Then we hauled it up

the fat folks' slide a little way and came down, hoo-hooing a warning to

those ahead in the regulation way. We did this several times, liking it

more and more. We got braver and tried the next slide, liking it still

better. Then we got reckless and crossed into the bobsled scoot and

tried that. Oh, fine! We did not go to the top--we did not know then how

far the top was; but we went higher each time, liking it more and more,

until we got up to a place where the sleds stood out at a perpendicular

right angle as they swirled around a sudden circle against a constructed

ice barrier. This looked dangerous, but getting more and more reckless,

we decided to go even above that.

We hauled our sled up and up, constantly meeting bobsleds coming down

and hearing the warning hoo-hoo-hooing of still others descending from

the opaque upper mist. Still we climbed, dragging our sled, meeting bob

after bob, also loads of hay and wood, and finally some walking girls

who told us that the top of the slide was at Son Loup--that is, at the

top of the funicular, some miles away.

We understood then; all those bobsledders took their sleds up by

funicular and coasted down. We stopped there and got on our sled. The

grade was very gradual at first, and we moved slowly--so slowly that a

nice old lady who happened along gave us a push. We kept moving after

that. We crossed a road, rounded a turn, leaped a railway track and

struck into the straightway, going like a streak. We had thought it a

good distance to the sharp turn, with its right-angle wall of ice, but

we were there with unbelievable suddenness. Then in a second we were on

the wall, standing straight out into space; then in another we had shot

out of it; but our curve seemed to continue.

There was a little barnyard just there and an empty hay sled--placed

there on purpose, I think now. At any rate, the owner was there watching

the performance. I think he had been expecting us. When all motion

ceased he untelescoped us, and we limped about and discussed with him in

native terms how much we ought to pay for the broken runner on his hay

sled, and minor damages. It took five francs to cure the broken runner,

which I believe had been broken all the time and was just set there

handy to catch inadvertent persons like ourselves. We finished our slide

then and handed in our sled, which the old Frenchman looked at fondly

and said: "_Tres bon--tres vite._" He did not know how nearly its speed

had come to landing us in the newspapers.

We took the funicular to Son Loup, and at the top found ourselves in

what seemed atmospheric milk. We stood at the hotel steps and watched

the swift coasters pass. Every other moment they flashed by, from a

white mystery above--a vision of faces, a call of voices--to the

inclosing mystery again. It was like life; but not entirely, for they

did not pass to silence. The long, winding hill far below was full of

their calls'--muffled by the mist--their hoo-hoo-hoos of warning to

those ahead and to those who followed. But it was suggestive, too. It

was as if the lost were down there in that cold whiteness.

The fog grew thicker, more opaque, as the day waned. It was an

impalpable wall. We followed the road from the hotel, still higher into

its dense obscurity. When a tree grew near enough to the road for us to

see it, we beheld an astonishing sight. The mist had gathered about the

evergreen branches until they were draped, festooned, fairly clotted

with pendulous frost embroidery.

We had been told that there was ski-ing up there and we were anxious to

see it, but for a time we found only blankness and dead silence. Then at

last--far and faint, but growing presently more distinct--we heard a

light sound, a movement, a "swish-swish-swirl"--somewhere in the mist at

our right, coming closer and closer, until it seemed right upon us, and

strangely mysterious, there being no visible cause. We waited until a

form appeared, no, grew, materialized from the intangible--so

imperceptibly, so gradually, that at first we could not be sure of it.

Then the outlines became definite, then distinct; an athletic fellow on

skis maneuvered across the road, angled down the opposite slope,

"swish-swish-swirl"--checking himself every other stroke, for the

descent was steep--faded into unknown deeps below--the whiteness had

shut him in. We listened while the swish-swish grew fainter, and in the

gathering evening we felt that he had disappeared from the world into

ravines of dark forests and cold enchantments from which there could be

no escape.

We climbed higher and met dashing sleds now and then, but saw no other

ski-ers that evening. Next morning, however, we found them up there,

gliding about in that region of vapors, appearing and dissolving like

cinema figures, their voices coming to us muffled and unreal in tone. I

left the road and followed down into a sort of basin which seemed to be

a favorite place for ski practice. I felt exactly as if I were in a

ghostly aquarium.

I was not much taken with ski-ing, as a whole. I noticed that even the

experts fell down a good many times and were not especially graceful

getting up.

But I approve of coasting under the new conditions--_i. e._ with

funicular assistance. In my day coasting was work--you had to tug and

sweat up a long slippery incline for a very brief pleasure. Keats (I

think it was Keats, or was it Carolyn Wells?) in his, or her, well-known

and justly celebrated poem wrote:

It takes a long time to make the climb,

And a minute or less to come down;

But that poetry is out of date--in Switzerland. It no longer takes a

long time to make the climb, and you do it in luxury. You sit in a

comfortable seat and your sled is loaded on an especially built car.

Switzerland is the most funiculated country in the world; its hills are

full of these semi-perpendicular tracks. They make you shudder when you

mount them for the first time, and I think I never should be able to

discuss frivolous matters during an ascent, as I have seen some do.

Still, one gets hardened, I suppose.

They are cheap. You get commutation tickets for very little, and all day

long coasters are loading their sleds on the little shelved flatcar,

piling themselves into the coach, then at the top snatching off their

sleds to go whooping away down the long track to the lower station.

Coasters get killed now and then, and are always getting damaged in one

way and another; for the track skirts deep declivities, and there are

bound to be slips in steering, and collisions. We might have stayed

longer and tried it again, but we were still limping from our first

experiment. Besides, we were not dressed for the real thing. Dress may

not make the man, but it makes the sportsman.

Part II

MOTORING THROUGH THE GOLDEN AGE

Chapter I

THE NEW PLAN

But with the breaking out of the primroses and the hint of a pale-green

beading along certain branches in the hotel garden, the desire to be

going, and seeing, and doing; to hear the long drowse of the motor and

look out over the revolving distances; to drop down magically, as it

were, on this environment and that--began to trickle and prickle a

little in the blood, to light pale memories and color new plans.

We could not go for a good while yet. For spring is really spring in

Switzerland--not advance installments of summer mixed with left-overs

from winter, but a fairly steady condition of damp coolness--sunlight

that is not hot, showers that are not cold--the snow on the

mountainsides advancing and retreating--sometimes, in the night, getting

as low down as Chardonne, which is less than half an hour's walk above

the hotel.

There is something curiously unreal about this Swiss springtime. We saw

the trees break out into leaf, the fields grow vividly green and fresh,

and then become gay with flowers, without at all feeling the reason for

such a mood. In America such a change is wrought by hot days--cold ones,

too, perhaps, but certainly hot ones; we have sweltered in April,

though we have sometimes snowballed in May. The Swiss spring was

different. Three months of gradual, almost unnoticeable, mellowing kept

us from getting excited and gave us plenty of time to plan.

That was good for us--the trip we had in mind now was no mere matter of

a few days' journey, from a port to a destination; it was to be a

wandering that would stretch over the hills and far away, through some

thousands of kilometers and ten weeks of time. That was about all we had

planned concerning it, except that we were going back into France, and

at one point in those weeks we expected to touch Cherbourg and pick up a

missing member of the family who would be dropped there by a passing

ship. We studied the maps a good deal, and at odd times I tinkered with

the car and wondered how many things would happen to it before we

completed the long circle, and if I would return only partially crippled

or a hopeless heap of damage and explanations. Never mind--the future

holds sorrow enough for all of us. Let us anticipate only its favors.

So we planned. We sent for a road map of France divided into four

sections, showing also western Germany and Switzerland. We spread it out

on the table and traced a variety of routes to Cherbourg; by Germany, by

Paris direct, by a long loop down into southern France. We favored the

last-named course. We had missed some things in the Midi--Nimes, Pont du

Gard, Orange--and then there was still a quality in the air which made

us feel that the south would furnish better motor weather in May.

Ah, me! There is no place quite like the Provence. It is rather dusty,

and the people are drowsy and sometimes noisy, and there are mosquitoes

there, and maybe other unpleasant things; but in the light chill of a

Swiss spring day there comes a memory of rich mellowness and September

roadsides, with gold and purple vintage ripening in the sun, that lights

and warms the soul. We would start south, we said. We were not to reach

Cherbourg until June. Plenty of time for the north, then, and later.

We discussed matters of real importance--that is to say, expenses. We

said we would give ourselves an object lesson, this time, in what could

really be done in motor economies. On our former trip we had now and

again lunched by the roadside, with pleasing results. This time we would

always do it. Before, we had stopped a few times at small inns in

villages instead of seeking out hotels in the larger towns. Those few

experiments had been altogether satisfactory, both as to price and

entertainment. Perhaps this had been merely our good fortune, but we

were willing to take further chances. From the fifty francs a day

required for our party of four we might subtract a franc or so and still

be nourished, body and soul. Thus we planned. When it was pleasant we

enjoyed shopping for our roadside outfit; a basket, square, and of no

great size; some agate cups and saucers; some knives and forks; also an

alcohol stove, the kind that compacts itself into very small compass,

aluminum, and very light-- I hope they have them elsewhere than in

Switzerland, for their usefulness is above price.