Well: 'tis a motley assemblage this! The world is checkered here not
less than in the noisy and elegant capital; and man's peculiarities,
man's excellencies, and man's defects, follow him even into the heart of
these wild mountains, showing themselves in these smaller groups, not
less strongly than amid the crowded streets of Paris! How should it be
otherwise? Does not every one come hither to unbend, to throw off the
stiff mask of metropolitan society for the moment, and to become
themselves natural while they invoke the aid of nature's healthy
influence? The strict etiquette of the Faubourg St Germain may here be
safely laid aside awhile; and the inspirations of country life, the
happy the delightful inspirations of youth, may be once more resumed.
What a comfort to be able to get out of the buckram and taffetas of the
court, to put on one's _neglige_, or one's shooting-jacket, and to keep
company awhile with no less cheerful companions than the songsters and
the rangers of the forest! Why it does one's inmost soul good to fly
away from the din and turmoil, even of the pleasure-seeking Parisians,
and to revert to the simple, yet grand and expansive ideas which scenery
such as this of Mont Dor brings into the mind in an instant.
True: the mountains increase in magnitude and grandeur as you approach
them; once within their lofty and austere recesses, and their sublimity
makes itself felt. You are brought into immediate contact with some of
the mightiest works of the Creator, and the mind expands of itself,
unconsciously and irresistibly, till it becomes capable of imbibing, of
comprehending, and of enjoying the full magnificence of nature!
But does the courtier, does the citizen lay aside his pack of habits, as
well as his pack of cares, when he becomes a temporary denizen of the
country? Would that it were so! He is cast in a mould--his mind has been
warped: his body requires moistening with the freshest and the earliest
dews of many an "incense-breathing morn," ere it can resume the full
elasticity and joyous lightness of rustic activity; and his soul wants a
long oblivion of all conventional preoccupation, all trouble and all
intrigue, ere it can recover the tone and temper of younger days.
Now, I had been saying all this to myself, and should have gone on
moralising till the weary hour of noon, perhaps; but while I was
leaning over the balustrade of my window, looking down into the Grande
Place----Oh yes, to be sure! there is a Grande Place at Mont
Dor-les-Bains, as well as at any other town, village, or city. Did you
ever in your life hear or see any thing French to which the epithet of
_Grand_ had not been, by some means or other, tacked on? From the _Grand
Monarque_ at the head of the _Grande Armee_ of the _Grande Nation_, down
to the _Grand limonadier_ of the _Grand Cafe_ of the _Grande Place_, it
is all _Grand_. Oh, this villanous spirit of exaggeration! this attempt
at the sublime so inevitably linked to the ridiculous!----Just so! I was
leaning over the balustrade of my window, which, from the third story of
the hotel, "gave," as they term it, into the Grande Place. Now it is one
of the most delightful things imaginable, after you have indulged in
your morning's ablutions, and have produced that indefinable lilac tint
on your chin, which tells of easy shaving soap and a Rogers's true old
English razor, to don your shawl dressing-gown, and, having adjusted
your _bonnet grec_ towards the right side of your head, so as to allow
the glossy curl to escape and hang pendant on the left; when all this is
done, to "light the brown cigar," to put yourself in an elegant
reclining posture between your opening _jalousies_, and, with both
elbows resting on the red velvet cushion that crowns the hard edge of
the balustrade, to puff forth light wreaths of blue vapour into the
balmy air, and to see the bathers come back from the baths. There you
may "think down hours to moments:" and so was it with myself; for I took
my post at my window by half-past six, and at nine I was still there.
Every now and then went forth my curling column; then my eye would catch
the glorious "mountain-tops bathed in the golden light of morn;" then I
would give a glance at sublunary things awhile, and speculate on the
moving animals below; then puff, and gaze, and speculate again; and all
that while be the happiest of men, in the absolute absence of any thing
but perfect idleness.
You may say what you please, but it does the mind good to think of
nothing at times; to let the impressions of passing events glide through
the soul, and titillate the imagination, but to "leave no trace behind."
Oh yes! this fairy dancing on the sands of life's dull shore, is very
pleasant occupation for a summer morn, and eke a summer eve. It is
poetical, to say the least of it; and day-dreams may sometimes prove not
less agreeable than those mysterious scenes of night, when the soul
quits her corporeal shackles, and roams in pure fancy through the world
of thought, seeing sights of beauty, and scenes of paradisaical
splendour, which the dull organs of bodily vision can never attain unto.
Why! the happiest portion of my life is that which I have passed in the
land of dreams: one third of my existence has been spent there--and I
have friends, and well-known faces, and peaceful valleys, and bright
streams, and strains of ethereal music, which are still and ever vivid
in my waking mind, but at night call me to themselves, and wrap me in a
state of enjoyment which certainly this poor weak body of mind never
could be capable of experiencing. I have positively new, altogether new
and unheard-of ideas--I do not mean irrational ones, nor those
phantasmagoric combinations that haunt the diseased brains of some
wretched mortals--but reasonable, possible, natural ideas of form and
substance, which I am persuaded have their types in some corner or other
of the universe, and which it may perhaps be hereafter my too happy
destiny to witness, and to dwell amongst for ever and for aye. I would
not exchange my dreams for all the realities of----
"_Monsieur! veut-il dejeuner au salon?_" said the slip-shod _garcon_ of
the hotel, tapping me on the shoulder. "The company have all taken their
seats, and I have kept a chair for Monsieur. Does Monsieur prefer
Burgundy or claret? The _vin ordinaire_ is not sufferable: _au reste_,
here is the _carte_, and Monsieur has only to choose."
"'Tis a reality, my friend, that I was not then exactly thinking of--but
breakfast I must, and will. But just tell me, for a minute, where these
people come from, that I see down in the Place there, at that
corner--the old gentleman in nankeen, with the green shade over his
eyes, and the fat little dame by his side; and those young ladies at the
door of the large hotel opposite, and the spruce _militaire_ there at
the window, and that knot of men in long brown surtouts, one of whom is
gesticulating so vehemently."
"_Excusez_, Monsieur, those _gentlemen_ are great politicians," (_grand_
again, thought I!) "and one of them is deputy for the Department--M. de
Beauparler: he has just been voting against the Ministry, sir; he is a
great friend of M. Lafitte, sir; oh, sir! _c'est le plus grand orateur
de notre pays!_ You ought to hear him, sir. As for the young ladies,
sir, they are _les Demoiselles Leroy_: it was their father that you were
remarking just now--the old gentleman--very short-sighted, sir--he is
immensely rich; _Pardi! que sais-je?_" (here he shrugged up his
shoulders to his ears,) "they say he has 50,000 francs a-year!--_c'est
assommant!_" (here he shut his eyes and raised his nose at an angle of
forty-five degrees.) "_Quant aux demoiselles, elles sont_"----(he was
evidently at a loss for an expression; so he extended his first two
fingers to his lips, closing tightly the others and his thumb, and then
blew a kiss with them to the winds.)
Tap! tap! at the door. "Pierre! are you coming down, then? they are
asking for you every where!" And the tightly girded, and somewhat
_altius accincta, fille-de-chambre_--a spruce little black-eyed
_Auvergnate_,--tripped into the room. "_Excusez, milor!_ but Pierre is
such a gossip!" "My good girl, I will detain neither Pierre nor
yourself: give me my coat, dust my room well, and now show me to the
_salle-a-manger_."
As good luck would have it, Pierre had placed a chair for me next to
Madame de Mirepoix, her husband was on the other side of his
lady,--'twas impossible to be in better company. Opposite to me was a
venerable white-haired mustached gentleman, evidently a military man,
and next to me was a lady, some five-and-forty, or thereabouts, with a
strong Spanish cast of countenance and complexion, and her husband, a
short thick-necked apoplectic-looking man, by her side. The rest of the
company, though various enough in their physiognomical aspect, were
evidently persons of the upper ranks of society, and among them were
several choice specimens of the best and oldest nobility of France. They
seemed all to make one joyous family party, as if they had been
relations rather than strangers; every body was laughing and chatting
with his neighbour; they were plying their forks most vigorously, and
the noise and bustle was excessive.
"What do you think of our baths?" said my lovely neighbour; "for of
course you have already been immersed in, and have tasted the waters." I
humbly alleged the negative. "Well! I declare this _phlegme Britannique_
is insupportable. Why, sir, we were at the bath-house before six this
morning."
"Had I but known it, Madame"----
"Ah, just so!" said the little apoplectic gentleman leaning across his
wife to me: "_Monsieur est Anglais! c'est tres bien, c'est tres bien!_
Monsieur, you do us great honour to come to visit this savage
wilderness. But _voyez-vous_, you would have done much better to have
stopped at Paris; there's nothing here, sir--absolutely nothing! What
are these mountains? Bare rocks! forests, indeed, there are; but there
are forests every where. Give me, sir, the Foret de Montmorency, even
the Bois de Boulogne; and for rocks, I wish for nothing better than the
Rocher de Cancale." (Here he rubbed his hands excessively, and looked
round the table for a smile at the _bon-mot_.)
"M. Bouton will pardon me," observed the old officer, "but if he had
travelled all over Europe as I have done, he would not wonder at the
desire to change an every-day scene for something new. When our _corps
d'armee_ was traversing the Mont St Bernard, I assure you I never felt
the slightest regret at having quitted Paris:--we could have gone on to
the end of the world with the spirits we then were in. It was the same
in the Pyrenees:--for more reasons than one I was extremely sorry when
we had to quit Pampeluna for Bayonne"--and the old gentleman sighed, and
looked wistfully up at the ceiling, as though many a painful
recollection came across his mind at that moment.
"Which are the finer mountains sir," was my inquiry--"the Pyrenees or
these of Auvergne?"
"You can hardly draw a comparison between them," he replied. "There is
vast extent, width, and height in the Pyrenees, and a certain degree of
savage horror about them, which you do not feel even amidst the
Alps:--they partake of the nature both of France and Spain:--they are
unlike any mountains I know of. But for all this, sir, do not allow
yourself to hold a poor opinion of these heights of Mont Dor: you will
find here scope and exercise for all your enthusiasm, all your love of
the picturesque. Are you fond of shooting and hunting?--well, then, if
you were to remain here during September and October, braving the early
snows which come upon these mountains even in autumn, you would have
your choice of all animals from the wolf to the _chevreuil_ and the
hare, and of all birds from the eagle to the partridge. There are plenty
of snipes on these hills."
"M. le Baron de Bretonville," said Madame Bouton, "do not go to tempt
the English gentleman to any of your hare-brained expeditions: he is
come here to enjoy the baths:--he is a victim to the spleen; he must be
danced and talked and bathed into good health, and a little vivacity
first of all. When we all leave the baths, we will give him permission
to stop behind with you, and you may kill all the game you can find. At
present we want a cavalier for our expedition: there is Madame
d'Arlincourt, and Madame de Tourzel, and the Duchesse de Vauvilliers,
and Madame de Mirepoix there, on your right--why these ladies are all
here by themselves; they want a cavalier this very morning.
_Figurez-vous_, Monsieur!" and the lady turned towards me--"we want
somebody to come and find our ponies for us, and to take care of our
shawls, and to carry our books, and our stools, and positively, with the
exception of two officers who are at the other hotel, I do not know whom
to ask. We engage you, sir, for the whole of this very day: our
husbands"----
"I thought, Madame, that these ladies were all alone here."
"Ah!--our husbands, _ca va sans dire_!--but gentlemen of that kind do
nothing else than play billiards all the morning."
"It is only the young and the gallant," here interposed Madame de
Mirepoix "that dare to face our forests.--You shall teach us all some
English as we ride along: I could give any thing to master your
barbarous language:--you have only one musical word in it--_moonlight_."
Now, I know not what there was in the pronunciation of Madame de
Mirepoix, but though the word had never before entered into my
imagination as any thing but one of the most commonplace of our
vocabulary, there was a witchery in the sound as it flowed forth from
her swelling lips that riveted my attention, and set my imagination on
fire. 'Tis the same with French:--how refined and how mellow soever may
be the utterance of the most polished courtier of France, of the most
learned academician of the Institute, there is sometimes a rich pouting
sound, a sort of velvety and oily intonation, that distinguishes the
speech of the women of high birth such as I never heard in any other
country. It is not to be defined: but whoso has drunk in the golden
tones of such a syren, will know what I mean. Moonlight! yes, 'tis a
pleasing word, by its signification and its associated ideas, if not by
its own innate harmony: yes; I have learned the full influence and
sweetness of moonlight, whether in the summer woodland or in the wintry
cloister; true, there is both music and poetry, ay and something else,
in moonlight.
"I agree to the thing, Madame la Marquise, if not to the sound; nothing
could be more beautiful than the latter as you have pronounced it,
except the reality, amidst these mountains and these retired deep-green
glades."
"Nous le verrons, peut-etre."