UP THE GARONNE--THE OLD WARS ON ITS BANKS--ITS BOATS AND ITS
SCENERY--AGEN--JASMIN, THE LAST OF THE TROUBADOURS--SOUTHERN
COOKERY AND GARLIC--THE BLACK PRINCE IN A NEW LIGHT--A DREARY
PILGRIMAGE TO PAU.
A solemn imprecation is on record, uttered against the memory of the man
who invented getting up by candle-light; to which some honest gentleman,
fond of long lying, has appended a fellow curse, fulminated against the
man who invented getting up at all. Whatever we may think of the latter
commination, I suppose we shall all agree in the propriety of the
former. At all events, no one ever execrated with more sincere good will
the memory of the ingenious originator of candle-light turnings-out than
I did, when a red ray shone through the keyhole of my bedroom, and the
knuckles of--one would call him boots at home--rattled at the door,
while his hoarse voice proclaimed, "_Trois heures et demi_,"--a most
unseasonable and absurd hour certainly; but the Agen steamer, having the
strong stream of the Garonne to face, makes the day as long as possible;
and starts from the bridge--and a splendid bridge it is--of Bordeaux,
crack at half-past four. There was no help for it; and so, leaving my
parting compliments for my worthy host, I soon found myself following
the truck which conveyed my small baggage, modestly stuck into the
interstices of an Alp-like pile of ricketty boxes and faded valises, the
property of an ancient _commis voyageur_, my fellow-lodger; and pacing,
for the last time, the stately quays of the city of the Black Prince.
Early as it was, and pitch-dark, the steam-boat pier was crowded and
bustling enough. Men with lanterns and luggage were rushing breathlessly
about--and gentlemen with brushy black beards were kissing each other
with true French _éffusion_--while a crowd of humble vintagers were
being stowed away in the fore part of the boat. On the pier I observed a
tent, and looking in, found myself in a genuine early breakfast shop,
where I was soon accommodated with a seat by a pan of glowing charcoal.
The morning was bitter cold; and a magnificent bowl of smoking coffee,
bread hot from the oven, and just a nip of cognac, at the kind
suggestion of the jolly motherly-looking old lady in no end of shawls,
who presided over the establishment, and who pronounced it "_Bon pour
l'estomac, du monsieur le voyageur_." Then aboard; and after the due
amount of squabbling, bell-ringing, and contradictory orders, we
launched forth upon the black, rushing river.
A dreary time it is waiting for the daylight of an autumnal morning,
watching the pale negative lighting of the east--then the spreading of
the dim approaching day--stars going out, and the outlines of hills
coming in--and houses and trees, faint and comfortless, looming amid the
grey, cold mist. The Garonne gradually turned from black to yellow--the
genuine pea-souppy hue--and bit by bit the whole landscape came clearly
into stark-staring view--but still cold and dreary-looking--until the
cheering fire stood upon the hill-tops, and announced the rising sun. In
half an hour the valley of the Garonne was a blaze of warmth and
cheerfulness, and nothing could be more picturesquely beautiful, seen
under such auspices, than the fleet of market-boats through which we
threaded our way, and which were floating quietly down to Bordeaux. I
dismiss the mere vegetable crafts; but the fruit-boats would have made
Mr. Lance leap and sing for joy. They were piled--clustered--heaped
over--with mountains of grapes bigger than big gooseberries--peaches and
apricots, like thousands of ladies' cheeks--plums like pulpy, juicy
cannon-balls--and melons big as the head of Gog or Magog. I could not
understand how the superincumbent fruit did not crush that below; but I
suppose there is a knack in piling. At all events, the boats were loaded
to the gunwales with the luscious, shiny, downy, gushing-looking
globules, purple and yellow, and both colours mellowed and softened by
the grateful green of the clustering leaves. These boats looked like
floating cornucopias. Amongst them sometimes appeared a wine-boat--one
man at the head, one at the stern, and a Pyrenees of wine casks between
them--while here and there we would pass a huge Noah's ark of a barge,
towed by a string of labouring oxen, and steered from a platform
amidships by a tiller a great deal longer, thicker, and heavier than the
mast.
And now for a bit of the landscape. We have Gascony to our right, and
Guienne to our left.
Here and there, then, particularly in Guienne, the Garonne is not unlike
the tamer portions of the Rhine. The green vine-clothed banks rise into
precipitous ridges, whitened by streaks of limestone cliff, cottages
nestling in the crevices and ravines, and an occasional feudal tower
crowning the topmost peak. The villages passed near the water's edge are
doleful-looking places, ruinous and death-like; whitish, crumbling
houses, with outside shutters invariably closed; empty and lonesome
streets, and dilapidated piers, the stakes worn and washed away by the
constant action of the river. Take Langon and Castres as specimens of
these places: two drearier towns--more like sepulchres than towns--never
nurtured owls and bats. They seem to be still lamenting the old English
rule, and longing for the jolly times when stout English barons led the
Gascon knights and men-at-arms on profitable forays into Limousin and
Angoumais. Occasionally, however, we have a more promising and pleasing
looking town. These, for the most part, are tolerably high up the river,
and possess some curious and characteristic features. You will descry
them, for instance, towering up from a mass of perpendicular cliffs; the
open-galleried and bartizaned red houses, reared upon arches and
pillars, rising from the rock; flights of stairs from the water's edge
disappearing among the buildings, and strips of terraced gardens laid
out on the narrow shelves and ledges of the precipice.
The ruins of old feudal castles are numerous on both sides of the river;
and if the red mossy stone could speak, many a tale of desperate siege
and assault it could, no doubt, tell--for these strongholds were
perpetually changing masters in the wars between the French and the
English and Gascons; and often, when peace subsisted between the crowns,
were they attacked and harried by moss-trooping expeditions led by
French Watts Fire-the-Braes, or by English Christies of the Clinthill.
While, then, the steamer is slowly plodding her way up stream, turning
reach after reach, and showing us another and yet another pile of feudal
ruins, let us sit down here with Froissart beneath the awning, and try
to gain some inkling into the warlike customs of the times when these
thick-walled towers--no doubt built, as honest King James remarked, by
gentlemen who were thieves in their hearts--alternately displayed the
Lion Rampant and the Fleur-de-Lis.
In all the fighting of the period--I refer generally to the age of the
Black Prince--there would appear to have been a great deal of chivalric
courtesy and forbearance shown on either side. It was but seldom that a
place was defended _à outrance_. If the besiegers appeared in very
formidable force, the besieged usually submitted with a very good grace,
marched honourably out, and had their turn next time. I cannot find that
there was anything in the nature of personal animosity between the
combatants, but there was great wantonness of life; and though few men
were killed in downright cold blood, a man was frequently made the
victim of a sort of murderous frolicsomeness, the manner of his death
being suggested, by the circumstances of the moment. For instance, on
one occasion, an English and Gascon garrison was besieged in
Auberoche--the French having "brought from Toulouse four large machines,
which cast stones into the fortress night and day, which stones
demolished all the roofs of the towers, so that none within the walls
dared to venture out of the vaulted rooms on the ground-floor." In this
strait, a "varlet" undertook to carry letters, requesting succour, to
the Earl of Derby, at Bordeaux. He was unsuccessful in getting through
the French lines, and being arrested, the letters were found upon him,
hung round his neck, and the poor wretch bound hand and foot, inserted
in one of the stone-throwing machines. His cries for mercy all unheeded,
the engine made two or three of its terrific swings, and then launched
the screaming "varlet" into the air, right over the battlements of
Auberoche, "so that he fell quite dead amid the other varlets, who were
much terrified at it;" and presently, the French knights, riding up to
the walls, shouted to the defenders: "Gentlemen, inquire of your
messenger where he found the Earl of Derby, seeing that he has returned
to you so speedily." But the Earl of Derby did come, and took signal
vengeance. The battle, which Froissart tells in his best manner,
resulted in the capture by the English of nine French viscounts, and "so
many barons, squires, and knights, that there was not a man-at-arms
among the English that had not for his share two or three."
The captains of the pillaging bands, who preyed both upon the English
and the French, and the hired auxiliaries, who transferred their
services from one side to the other, were, however, miserable
assassins, thirsting for blood. These men were frequently Bretons; and,
says Froissart, "the most cruel of all Bretons was Geoffrey Tete-Noire."
With this Geoffrey Tete-Noire, continues the old chronicler, "there was
a certain captain, who performed many excellent deeds of arms, namely,
Aimerigot Marcel, a Limousin squire, attached to the side of the
English." One of the "deeds of arms" performed under this worthy's
auspices is narrated as follows:--
"Aimerigot made one day an excursion, with only twelve companions, to
seek adventures. They took the road towards Aloise, near St. Fleur,
which has a handsome castle in the bishopric of Clermont. They knew the
castle was only guarded by the porter. As they were riding silently
towards Aloise, Aimerigot spied the porter sitting upon the branch of a
tree without side of the castle. The Breton, who shot extraordinary well
with a cross-bow, says to him, 'Would you like to have that porter
killed at a shot?'--'Yea,' replied Aimerigot; 'and I hope you will
do so.' The cross-bow man shoots a bolt, which he drives into the
porter's head, and knocks him down. The porter, feeling himself mortally
wounded, regains the gate, which he attempts to shut, but cannot, and
falls down dead."
This delectable anecdote, Froissart--probably as kind-hearted a man by
nature as any of his age--tells as the merest matter of course, and
without a word of compunction or reproof. The fact is, that the gay and
lettered canon of Chimay cared and thought no more of the spilling of
blood which was not gentle, than he would of the scotching of a rat or
a snake. Lingeringly and wofully does he record the deaths of dukes, and
viscounts, and even simple knights and squires, who have done their
_devoirs_ gallantly; but as to the life-blood of the varlets--the
vilains--the kernes--the villagios--the Jacques Bonhommes--foh! the red
puddle--let it flow; blood is only blood when it gushes from the veins
of a gentleman!
[Illustration: JASMIN.]
The evening was closing, and the mist stealing over the Garonne, when we
came alongside the pier at Agen. A troop of diligence _conducteurs_ and
canal touters immediately leaped on board, to secure the passengers for
Toulouse, either by road or water. Being, fortunately, not of the number
who were thus taken prisoners, I walked up through the sultry
evening--for we are now getting into the true south--to the very
comfortable hotel looking upon the principal square of the town. One of
my objects in stopping at Agen was, to pay a literary visit to a very
remarkable man--JASMIN, the peasant-poet of Provence and Languedoc--the
"Last of the Troubadours," as, with more truth than is generally to be
found in _ad captandum_ designations, he terms himself, and is termed by
the wide circle of his admirers; for Jasmin's songs and rural epics are
written in the _patois_ of the people, and that _patois_ is the still
almost unaltered _Langue d'Oc_--the tongue of the chivalric minstrelsy
of yore. But Jasmin is a Troubadour in another sense than that of merely
availing himself of the tongue of the _ménestrels_. He publishes,
certainly--conforming so far to the usages of our degenerate modern
times; but his great triumphs are his popular recitations of his poems.
Standing bravely up before an expectant assembly of perhaps a couple of
thousand persons--the hot-blooded and quick-brained children of the
South--the modern Troubadour plunges over head and ears into his lays,
working both himself and his applauding audience into fits of enthusiasm
and excitement, which, whatever may be the excellence of the poetry, an
Englishman finds it difficult to conceive or account for. The raptures
of the New Yorkers and Bostonians with Jenny Lind are weak and cold
compared with the ovations which Jasmin has received. At a recitation
given shortly before my visit at Auch, the ladies present actually tore
the flowers and feathers out of their bonnets, wove them into extempore
garlands, and flung them in showers upon the panting minstrel; while the
editors of the local papers next morning assured him, in floods of
flattering epigrams, that, humble as he was now, future ages would
acknowledge the "divinity" of a Jasmin! There is a feature, however,
about these recitations, which is still more extraordinary than the
uncontrollable fits of popular enthusiasm which they produce. His last
entertainment before I saw him was given in one of the Pyrenean cities
(I forget which), and produced 2000 francs. Every sous of this went to
the public charities; Jasmin will not accept a stiver of money so
earned. With a species of perhaps overstrained, but certainly exalted,
chivalric feeling, he declines to appear before an audience to exhibit
for money the gifts with which nature has endowed him. After, perhaps, a
brilliant tour through the South of France, delighting vast audiences in
every city, and flinging many thousands of francs into every poor-box
which he passes, the poet contentedly returns to his humble occupation,
and to the little shop where he earns his daily bread by his daily toil,
as a barber and hairdresser. It will be generally admitted, that the man
capable of self-denial of so truly heroic a nature as this, is no
ordinary poetaster. One would be puzzled to find a similar instance of
perfect and absolute disinterestedness in the roll of minstrels, from
Homer downwards; and, to tell the truth, there does seem a spice of
Quixotism mingling with and tinging the pure fervour of the enthusiast.
Certain it is, that the Troubadours of yore, upon whose model Jasmin
professes to found his poetry, were by no means so scrupulous.
"Largesse" was a very prominent word in their vocabulary; and it really
seems difficult to assign any satisfactory reason for a man refusing to
live upon the exercise of the finer gifts of his intellect, and throwing
himself for his bread upon the daily performance of mere mechanical
drudgery.
[Illustration: A POET'S HOUSE.]
Jasmin, as may be imagined, is well known in Agen. I was speedily
directed to his abode, near the open _Place_ of the town, and within
earshot of the rush of the Garonne; and in a few moments I found myself
pausing before the lintel of the modest shop inscribed, _Jasmin,
Perruquier, Coiffeur de jeunes Gens_. A little brass basin dangled above
the threshold; and, looking through the glass, I saw the master of the
establishment shaving a fat-faced neighbour. Now, I had come to see and
pay my compliments to a poet; and there did appear to me to be something
strangely awkward and irresistibly ludicrous in having to address, to
some extent in a literary and complimentary vein, an individual
actually engaged in so excessively prosaic and unelevated a species of
performance. I retreated, uncertain what to do, and waited outside until
the shop was clear.
Three words explained the nature of my visit; and Jasmin received me
with a species of warm courtesy, which was very peculiar and very
charming--dashing at once, with the most clattering volubility and fiery
speed of tongue, into a sort of rhapsodical discourse upon poetry in
general, and his own in particular--upon the French language in general,
and the _patois_ of it spoken in Languedoc, Provence, and Gascony in
particular. Jasmin is a well-built and strongly limbed man, of about
fifty, with a large, massive head, and a broad pile of forehead,
overhanging two piercingly bright black eyes, and features which would
be heavy were they allowed a moment's repose from the continual play of
the facial muscles, which were continually sending a series of varying
expressions across the swarthy visage. Two sentences of his conversation
were quite sufficient to stamp his individuality. The first thing which
struck me was the utter absence of all the mock-modesty, and the
pretended self-underrating, conventionally assumed by persons expecting
to be complimented upon their sayings or doings. Jasmin seemed
thoroughly to despise all such flimsy hypocrisy. "God only made four
Frenchmen poets!" he burst out with; "and their names are Corneille,
Lafontaine, Beranger, and Jasmin!" Talking with the most impassioned
vehemence, and the most redundant energy of gesture, he went on to
declaim against the influences of civilization upon language and
manners as being fatal to all real poetry. If the true inspiration yet
existed upon earth, it burned in the hearts and brains of men far
removed from cities, _salons_, and the clash and din of social
influences. Your only true poets were the unlettered peasants, who
poured forth their hearts in song, not because they wished to make
poetry, but because they were joyous and true. Colleges, academies,
schools of learning, schools of literature, and all such institutions,
Jasmin denounced as the curse and the bane of true poetry. They had
spoiled, he said, the very French language. You could no more write
poetry in French now, than you could in arithmetical figures. The
language had been licked, and kneaded, and tricked out, and plumed, and
dandified, and scented, and minced, and ruled square, and chipped--(I am
trying to give an idea of the strange flood of epithets he used)--and
pranked out, and polished, and muscadined, until, for all honest
purposes of true high poetry, it was mere unavailable and contemptible
jargon. It might do for cheating _agents de change_ on the Bourse--for
squabbling politicians in the Chambers--for mincing dandies in the
_salons_--for the sarcasm of Scribeish comedies, or the coarse
drolleries of Palais Royal farces; but for poetry the French language
was extinct. All modern poets who used it were mere _faiseurs de
phrase_--thinking about words, and not feelings. "No, no," my Troubadour
continued; "to write poetry, you must get the language of a rural
people--a language talked among fields, and trees, and by rivers and
mountains--a language never minced or disfigured by academies, and
dictionary-makers, and journalists; you must have a language like that
which your own Burns (whom I read of in Chateaubriand) used; or like the
brave old mellow tongue--unchanged for centuries--stuffed with the
strangest, quaintest, richest, raciest idioms, and odd, solemn words,
full of shifting meanings and associations, at once pathetic and
familiar, homely and graceful--the language which I write in, and which
has never yet been defiled by calculating men of science or jack-a-dandy
_litterateurs_."
The above sentences may be taken as a specimen of the ideas with which
Jasmin seemed to be actually overflowing at every pore in his body, so
rapid, vehement, and loud was his enunciation of them. Warming more and
more as he went on, he began to sketch the outlines of his favourite
pieces, every now and then plunging into recitation, jumping from French
to _patois_, and from _patois_ to French, and sometimes spluttering them
out, mixed up pell-mell together. Hardly pausing to take breath, he
rushed about the shop as he discoursed, lugging out, from old chests and
drawers, piles of old newspapers and reviews, pointing me out a passage
here in which the estimate of the writer pleased him, a passage there
which showed how perfectly the critic had mistaken the scope of his
poetic philosophy, and exclaiming, with the most perfect _naivete_, how
mortifying it was for men of original and profound genius to be
misconceived and misrepresented by pigmy whipper-snapper scamps of
journalists. There was one review of his works, published in a London
"_Recueil_," as he called it, to which Jasmin referred with great
pleasure. A portion of it had been translated, he said, in the preface
to a French edition of his works; and he had most of the highly
complimentary phrases by heart. The English critic, he said, wrote in
the _Tintinum_; and he looked dubiously at me when I confessed that I
had never heard of the organ in question. "_Pourtant_," he said, "_je
vous le ferai voir_:" and I soon perceived that Jasmin's _Tintinum_ was
no other than the _Athenæum_.
In the little back drawing-room behind the shop, to which the poet
speedily introduced me, his sister, a meek, smiling woman, whose eyes
never left her brother, following him as he moved with a beautiful
expression of love and pride in his glory, received me with simple
cordiality. The walls were covered with testimonials, presentations, and
trophies, awarded by cities and distinguished persons, literary and
political, to the modern Troubadour. Not a few of these are of a nature
to make any man most legitimately proud. Jasmin possesses gold and
silver vases, laurel branches, snuff-boxes, medals of honour, and a
whole museum of similar gifts, inscribed with such characteristic and
laconic legends as--"_Au Poete, Les Jeunes filles de Toulouse
reconnaissantes_----." The number of garlands of _immortelles_, wreaths
of ivy-jasmin (punning upon the name), laurel, and so forth, utterly
astonished me. Jasmin preserved a perfect shrubbery of such tokens; and
each symbol had, of course, its pleasant associative remembrance. One
was given by the ladies of such a town; another was the gift of the
prefect's wife of such a department. A handsome full-length portrait had
been presented to the poet by the municipal authorities of Agen; and a
letter from M. Lamartine, framed, above the chimney-piece, avowed the
writer's belief that the Troubadour of the Garonne was the Homer of the
modern world. M. Jasmin wears the ribbon of the Legion of Honour, and
has several valuable presents which were made to him by the late ex-king
and different members of the Orleans family.
I have been somewhat minute in giving an account of my interview with M.
Jasmin, because he is really the popular poet--the peasant poet of the
south of France--the Burns of Limousin, Provence, and Languedoc. His
songs are in the mouths of all who sing in the fields and by the cottage
firesides. Their subjects are always rural, _naive_, and full of rustic
pathos and rustic drollery. To use his words to me, he sings what the
hearts of the people say, and he can no more help it than can the birds
in the trees. Translations into French of his main poems have appeared;
and compositions more full of natural and thoroughly unsophisticated
pathos and humour it would be difficult to find. Jasmin writes from a
teeming brain and a beaming heart; and there is a warmth and a glow, and
a strong, happy, triumphant march of song about his poems, which carry
you away in the perusal as they carried away the author in the writing.
I speak of course from the French translations, and I can well conceive
that they give but a comparatively faint transcript of the pith and
power of the original. The _patois_ in which these poems are written is
the common peasant language of the south-west. It varies in some slight
degree in different districts, but not more than the broad Scotch of
Forfarshire differs from that of Ayrshire. As for the dialect itself, it
seems in the main to be a species of cross between old French and
Spanish--holding, however, I am assured, rather to the latter tongue
than the former, and constituting a bold, copious, and vigorous speech,
very rich in its colouring, full of quaint words and expressive phrases,
and especially strong in all that relates to the language of the
passions and affections.
I hardly know how long my interview with Jasmin might have lasted, for
he seemed by no means likely to tire of talking, and his talk was too
good and too curious not to be listened to with interest; but the
sister, who had left us for a moment, coming back with the intelligence
that there was quite a gathering of customers in the shop, I hastily
took my leave, the poet squeezing my hand like a vice, and immediately
thereafter dashing into all that appertains to curling-irons, scissors,
razors, and lather, with just as much apparent energy and enthusiasm as
he flung into his rhapsodical discourse on poetry and language.
Hereabouts you begin to become sensible of a change in the cookery at
the _table-d'hôtes_; and in the gradually increasing predominance of oil
and garlic, you recognise the kitchen influences of the sweet south.
Garlic is a word of fear--of absolute horror to a great proportion of
our countrymen, whose prejudices will permit them to learn no better. I
admit that the first whiff of the odorous root coming upon
inexperienced nostrils is far from pleasant; indeed, I well remember
being once driven from the table in a small _gasthoff_ at Strasbourg by
the fumes of a particularly strong sausage. Now, however, I think I
should know better. A relish for garlic, in fact, is one of those many
acquired tastes which grew upon us with curious rapidity. You turn from
the first garlicky dish with dismay; the second does not appear quite so
bad; you muster up courage, and taste the third. A strange flavour
certainly--nasty, too--but still--not irredeemably bad--there is a
lurking merit in the sensation--and you try the experiment again and
again--speedily coming to Sir Walter Scott's evident opinions touching
the _petit point d'ail_, "which Gascons love and Scotsmen do not
despise." Indeed, your friends will probably think it well if you
content yourself with the _petit point_, and do not give yourself up to
a height of seasoning such as that which I saw in the _salle à manger_
at Agen, drive two English ladies headlong from the room. Every body in
the South eats garlic, and you will find it for your interest, if but in
self-defence, to do the same; while the oil eating is equally
infectious: you enter Provence, able just to stand a sprinkling upon
your salad--you depart from it, thinking nothing of devouring a dish of
cabbage, chopped up, and swimming in the viscous fluid. The peasants all
through the South eat and drink oil like so many Russians. Wandering
through the dark and narrow streets of Agen--for we have now reached the
point where the eaves of the roofs are made to project so far as to cast
a perpetual shade upon the thoroughfare beneath--I came upon a group of
tiny urchins, clustered round a grocer's shop, in great admiration of a
row of clear oil-flasks displayed in the window.
"_Tiens_," said one. "_C'est de l'huile ça--de l'huile claire--ça doit
etre bon su' le pain--ça!_" The little gourmand looked upon oil just as
an English urchin would upon treacle.
It was from the heights above Agen--studded with the plum-trees which
produce the famous _prunes d'Agen_--that I caught my first glimpse of
the Pyrenees. I was sitting watching the calm uprising of the light
smoke from the leaf-covered town beneath, and marking the grand panorama
around me--the masses of luxuriant vines climbing up the plum and
fig-trees, and the earth frequently yellow with the bursting beds of
huge melons and pumpkins--when, extending my gaze over the vast expanse
of champagne country, watered by the winding reaches of the Garonne, I
saw--shadowy as the phantoms of airy clouds, rising into the far bright
air--faintly, very faintly traced, but still visible, a blue vision of
sierrated and jagged mountain peaks, stretching along the horizon from
east to west, forming the central portion of the great chain of peaks
running from Perpignan to Bayonne, and certainly, at least, one hundred
and twenty miles distant from me as the crow flies. There they
stood,--Louis Quatorze to the contrary, notwithstanding--one of the
great landmarks of the world; a natural boundary for ever; dividing a
people from a people, a tongue from a tongue, and a power from a power!
Below me, at the back of the town, once rose the ancient castle of Agen.
Its ruins were demolished, with those of a cathedral, at the time of the
Revolution; but its memory recalls a very curious story, developing the
true character of the Black Prince, and shewing that, chivalrous and
daring as he was, his tongue had in it an occasional smack of the
braggart, and that the Foremost Knight of all the World could
occasionally do uncommonly sneaking things. Thus it fell out:--In the
year 1368, the Lord of Aquitaine announced that he would raise a
hearth-tax throughout Guienne. The measure was, of course, unpopular,
and the Gascon lords appealed to the King of France, as Feudal Superior
of the Prince; and the King sent, by two commissioners--a lawyer and a
knight--a summons to Edward, to appear and answer before the Parliament
of Paris. The emissaries were introduced in High Court, at Bordeaux,
told their tale, and exhibited their missives. The Black Prince heard in
silence, and then, after a long pause, he sternly and solemnly replied:
"Willing shall we be to attend on the appointed day at Paris, since the
King of France sends for us; but it will be with the helmet on our head,
and sixty thousand men behind us."
The envoys fell on their knees, and bowed their heads to the ground.
After the Prince had retired, they were assured that they would get no
better answer; and so, after dinner, they set forth on the road to
Toulouse, where the Duke of Anjou lay, to convey to him the defiance of
the Englishman. Meantime, however, Edward began rather to repent the
unconditional style of his reply, and to wish the ambassadors back
again. Perhaps, after all, he had been a little too hasty, and had gone
a little too far; so he called together the chief of his barons, and
opened his mind to them. "He did not wish," he said, "the envoys to bear
his cartel to the King of France." In the opinion of the straightforward
practitioners whom he consulted, the means of prevention were easy: what
more practicable and natural than to send out a handful of
men-at-arms--catch the knight and the lawyer, and then and there cut
their throats? But Edward refused to commit unnecessary slaughter; and
possibly exclaiming, as gentlemen in a drama and a dilemma always do--"I
have it"--he gave some private instructions to Sir William le Moine, the
High Steward of Agenois, who immediately set forth at the head of a
plump of spears. Meantime, the envoys were quietly jogging along, when,
what was their horror and surprise at being suddenly pounced upon by the
Lord Steward, and arrested, upon the charge of having stolen a horse
from their last baiting place. It was in vain that the unfortunate pair
offered to bring any evidence of the falsity of the charge; Sir William
had as many witnesses as he commanded men-at-arms, and the victims were
hurried to the castle of Agen, and left to their own reflections in the
securest of its dungeons. When they got out again, or whether they ever
got out at all, Froissart does not condescend to inform us; but surely
the story shews the Black Prince in a new and not exactly favourable
light. We would hardly have expected to find the "Lion whelp of
England" stooping to trump up a false accusation against innocent men,
in order to shuffle out of the consequences of his own brag.
I found it no easy matter to get comfortably from Agen to Pau:
cross-country diligences are most untrustworthy conveyances. The pace at
which they crawl puts it out of the question that they should ever see a
snail which they did not meet; while the terribly long stages to which
the horses are doomed, keeps one in a constant state of moral
discomfort. However, I managed to get rattled and jangled on to Auch, on
the great Toulouse road, one of those towns which you wonder has been
built where it chances to lie, rather than anywhere else; and boasting a
grand old Gothic cathedral church, which Louis Quatorze, in the kindest
manner, enriched with a hugely clumsy Grecian portico, supported on fat,
dropsical pillars. The question was now, how to get on to Pau. The
Toulouse diligence passed every day, but was nearly always full; I might
have to wait a week for a place. A _voiturier_, however, was to start in
the evening, and he faithfully promised to set me down at Tarbes, whence
locomotion to Pau is easy, in time for a late supper; and so with this
worthy I struck a bargain. He shewed me a fair looking vehicle, and we
were to start at six. Punctually to the time, I was upon the ground, but
no conveyance appeared. The place was the front of a carrier's shed,
with an army of _roulage_ carts drawn up before it. I kicked my heels
there in vain, for not a bit could I see of _voiture_ or _voiturier_.
Seven struck--half-past seven--the north wind was bitterly cold, and a
sleety rain began to fall. Had I absolute powers for ten minutes, like
Abou Hassan, sorrowful would have been the fate of that _voiturier_. As
it was, the wind got colder and colder; the streets became deserted, and
the rain and sleet lashed the rough pavement with a loud, shrieking
rattle, when a wilder gust than common came thundering up the narrow
street. At length, sick of cursing the scoundrel, I turned, for warmth,
into a vast, broad-eaved _auberge_, the house of call, I supposed, for
the carriers; and entering the great shadowy kitchen, almost as big and
massive looking a room as an old baronial hall, a voice I knew--the
voice of the rascally _voiturier_ himself--struck my ear, exclaiming
with the most warm-hearted affability, "_Entrez, monsieur; entrez._ We
were waiting for you."
Waiting for me! Surrounded by a group of men in blouses, and two or
three fat women, who were to be my fellow-passengers, there was the
villain, discussing a capital dinner--the bare-armed wenches of the
place rushing between the vast fireplace and the table, with no end of
the savouriest and the most garlicky of dishes, and the whole party in
the highest state of feather and enjoyment. The cool impertinence of the
greeting, however, tickled me amazingly; and room being immediately
made, I was entreated to join the company, and exhorted to eat, as it
would be a good many hours before I had another chance. This looked
ominous; and besides, the whole meal, full of nicely browned stews, was
so appetising, that I fear I committed the enormity of making a very
tolerable second dinner; and so about half-past eight we at last got
under weigh.
But not in the vehicle which I had been shown. There was some
cock-and-bull story of that having been damaged; and we were
squeezed--six of us, including the fat ladies--into a dreadful square
box, with our twelve legs jammed together like the sticks of a faggot,
in the centre. Oh, the woes of that dreary night!--the gruntings and the
groanings of the fat ladies--the squabbles about "making legs," and,
notwithstanding our crowded condition, the intensity of the pinching
cold--one window was broken, another wouldn't pull up, and the whole
vehicle was full of cracks and crevices. Outside, the gale had increased
to a hurricane; the rain and sleet lashed the ground, so that you could
hardly hear the driver shouting at the full pitch of his voice to the
poor jades, who drearily dragged us through the mire. After an hour or
two's riding, the water began to trickle in on all sides. The fat ladies
said they could not possibly survive the night; and a poor thin slip of
a soldier next me accepted half a railway wrapper with the most vehement
"_Merci-bien merci!_" I ever heard in my life. About one in the morning
we pulled up at a lone public-house, in the kitchen of which the
passengers refreshed themselves with coffee, and I myself, to their
great surprise, with a liberal application of cognac and hot water. But
the French have no notion of the mellow beauties of toddy. The rest of
the night wore slowly and wretchedly on. I believe we had the same
horses all the way. Day was grey around us when we heard the voices of
the market people flocking in to Tarbes; and looking forth, after a
short, nightmareish dose, I beheld around me a wide champaign country,
as white with snow as Nova Zembla at Christmas. And this was the boasted
South of France, and the date was the twentieth of October!
[Illustration: CASTLE OF PAU.]