motherly face, comes down the steps to greet us. She has received my
letter; the beds are all ready for us; the dinner will be on the table
in half-an-hour; we are to be pleased to enter, and make ourselves at
home. We _are_ very pleased; for we are dreadfully tired (not cold, for
the weather is unnaturally mild), and have not had anything substantial
to eat all the day. We climb up the steps of the hotel, which looks just
like a farmhouse abutting on the main street, and find ourselves in a
sanded room, containing a long wooden table, with benches either side of
it, and bearing evident reminiscences of smoking and drinking—in fact,
‘not to put too fine a point on it,’ the public tap-room—but where we
are met by the landlady’s two eldest daughters, Thérèse and Josephine,
who are beaming in their welcome. They usher us into a second room,
where the children scream at the sight of a table laid for dinner, and
the four corners of which bear bowls of whipped cream and custard, and
rosy Ardennes apples, and biscuits just out of the oven. The little
people want to begin at once, and cannot be brought to see the necessity
of washing their faces and hands first, or waiting till the meat and
potatoes shall be placed upon the table. Would Madame like to see the
_chambres-à-coucher_ at once? Madame saying yes, Thérèse catches up the
youngest child but one, and, preceded by Josephine, we enter first a
scullery, next a bricked passage, thence mount a most perilous set of
dark narrow stairs, and stumble into a long whitewashed corridor, which
terminates in a glass-door opening on to a garden. Here three doors
successively thrown open introduce us to our bedrooms; and the trunks
having been brought up the breakneck stairs, we take possession at once.
The little white-curtained beds are small, but beautifully clean, and
each one is surmounted by its eider-down quilt in a coloured cotton case.
Two little islands of carpet in a sea of painted boards represent the
coverings of the floors; and the washing-stands are only deal-tables, and
there are no chests of drawers; but we inhale the fresh, vigorous breeze
which is pouring through the windows (open even at that season), and
think of fever-infected Brussels, and are content. But though it is all
very nice and clean, we cannot possibly wash without water, nor dry our
hands without towels.
An imbecile shout from the door for anybody or anything brings a
broad-featured, rosy, grinning German girl to our aid, who, when she is
asked her name, says it is Katrine, but we can call her by any name we
please. The pronunciation of ‘Katrine’ not presenting those difficulties
to our foreign tongues which the owner of it seems to anticipate, we
prefer to adhere to her baptismal cognomen, instead of naming her
afresh, and desire Katrine to bring us some hot water and towels; on
which she disappears, still on the broad grin, and returns with a pail
of warm water, which she sets down in the middle of the room. We manage
well enough with that, however, but are at our wits’ end when, on being
asked for more of the same fluid with which to mix the baby’s bottle,
she presents it to us in a washing-basin. But as, a few minutes after,
I encounter her in the corridor carrying a coffee-pot full to E—’s
room, I conclude that in Rochefort it is the fashion to use vessels
indiscriminately, and resolve thenceforth to take the goods the gods
provide, without questioning.
On descending to the dining-room, we find that the gods have been very
munificent in their gifts. After the soup appears roast beef; and as we
are very hungry, we cause it to look foolish, and are just congratulating
each other on having made an excellent dinner, when in trots Thérèse,
pops our dirty knives and forks upon the tablecloth, whips away our
plates, with that which contains the remainder of the beef, and puts down
a dish of mutton-chops in its stead. We look at one another in despair;
we feel it to be perfectly impossible to begin again upon mutton-chops,
and I am obliged to hint the same to Thérèse in the most delicate manner
in the world. She expostulates; but to no purpose, and leaves the room,
mutton-chops in hand. But only to give place to her mother, who enters
with a countenance of dismay to inquire what is wrong with the cooking
that we cannot eat.
Nothing is wrong; we have eaten remarkably well. It is our capabilities
of stowage which are at fault. Will we not have the hare, which is just
ready to be served up?
Sorry as we are to do it, we must decline the hare; and as we affirm that
we are ready for the pudding, and nothing else, we feel we have sunk in
Madame’s estimation.
The pudding, a _compote_ of apples and preserves, with the whipped cream
and custard, is delicious; and as soon as we have discussed it, we are
very thankful to stretch ourselves under the eider-down quilts, and know
the day to be over. We have done work enough that day to entitle us to
twelve hours’ repose; yet we are all wide-awake with the first beams of
the morning sun.
We dress ourselves with the pleasurable anticipation of seeing new
things, however simple, and come downstairs to a breakfast-table, in its
way as plentifully spread as the dinner-table of the night before. We
have an abundance of milk,—so fresh from the cow that it is covered with
froth, and the jug which contains it is quite warm,—eggs, cold meat,
home-made bread in huge brown loaves, good butter, and strong clear
coffee. In fact, we come to the conclusion that our landlady knows how
to live, and we no longer marvel at the rosy cheeks and full forms of
Thérèse and Josephine, nor that Madame herself fills out her dresses in
such a magnificent manner.
E— has been for a stroll before breakfast, and brings back a report of
ruins on the high ground; he has already unpacked his sketch-books and
sharpened his pencils. We, not being walking encyclopædias, seize our
_Continental Bradshaw_, and find that the ruins are those of a castle in
which Lafayette was made prisoner by the Austrians in 1792.
As soon as breakfast is concluded, we rush off to see the ruined castle,
which stands on an eminence just above the hotel, and which our landlady
(who walks into our sitting-room and takes a chair in the most confiding
manner possible whenever she feels so inclined) informs us, although
not open to the public, belongs to a lady whose house is built on the
same ground, and who will doubtless allow us to look over it. We can
see the remains of the castle before we reach them, and decide that it
must have been uglier and less interesting when whole than now, having
been evidently designed with a view to strength rather than beauty. The
little winding acclivitous path which leads to it, bounded by a low wall
fringed with ferns and mosses, is perhaps the prettiest part of the
whole concern; but just as we have scaled it, and come upon the private
dwelling-house, our poetic meditations are interrupted by the onslaught
of half-a-dozen dogs (one of which is loose, and makes fierce snaps
at our unprotected legs), which rush out of their kennels at chains’
length, and bark so vociferously, that we feel we have no need to make
our presence known by knocking at the door. A child appears at it; and we
inquire politely if we may see the ruins, at which she shakes her head,
and we imagine she doesn’t understand our Parisian French.
But in another moment we are undeceived, for the shrill, vixenish
voice of a woman (may dogs dance upon her grave!) exclaims sharply
from the open door, ‘_Fermez, fermez; on ne peut pas entrer._’ The
child obediently claps it to in our faces, and we retrace our steps,
with a conviction that the lady is like her castle—more strong than
beautiful. E— is so disgusted that he will not even sketch the ruins
from the opposite side of the road, up which another precipitous path
leads us to a long walk, which in summer must be a perfect bower, from
the interlacing of the branches of the trees with which it is bordered;
and from which we have a far better view of the ruins than the utmost
politeness of their owner could have afforded us. But no; judgment has
gone out against them; we decide they are heavy and unpicturesque, and
not worth the trouble; and we walk on in hopes of finding something
better: and are rewarded. At the close of the long over-shadowed walk,
a quaint little chapel, beside which stands a painted wooden crucifix
nearly the size of life, excites our curiosity, and, walking round it,
we come upon one of the loveliest scenes, even in the month of February,
that Nature ever produced.
A green valley, creeping in sinuous folds between two ranges of high
hills; one rocky and coated with heather, the other clothed with wood.
Beneath the rocky range there winds a road bordered by trees,—along which
we can see the red diligence which brought us from the station taking its
jangling way,—and beside it runs a stream, terminating in a cascade and
a bridge, and the commencement of the lower part of Rochefort. All the
fields are cut upon the sides of hills, and are diversified by clumps of
rock covered with ferns, and usually the groundwork of a well, protected
by a few rough planks, or the fountain-head of a mountain-stream which
trickles down until it joins the river. This is the valley of Jemelle,
to see which in the proper season would alone be worth a journey to
Rochefort. We look and admire, and lament the impossibility of ever
transferring such a scene to canvas as it should be done; and then we
turn back whence we came, and find we are standing at the entrance of an
artificial cave, situated at the back of the crucifix before alluded to,
and which forms perhaps as great a contrast to the natural loveliness
we have just looked upon, as could well be. Apparently it is the tomb
of some woman, by the framed requests which hang on either side that
prayers may be offered for the repose of her soul; but had her friends
turned out upon her grave all the maimed and motley rubbish to be found
in a nursery playbox of some years’ standing, they could scarcely have
decorated it in a less seemly manner. At the end of the cave is a wooden
grating, behind which is exhibited one of those tawdry assemblages of
horrors which tend more perhaps than all else to bring ridicule on the
Roman Catholic religion, so utterly opposed are they to our conceived
ideas of what is sacred. Two or three rudely-carved and coarsely-painted,
almost grotesque, wooden groups of the dead Christ, the Holy Family, and
the Crucifixion, form the groundwork of this exhibition: the interstices
being filled up with gold-and-white jars of dirty artificial flowers;
framed prints of saints with lace borders, reminding one of the worst
description of valentines; and composite figures, supposed to represent
the same individuals, and which may have cost fifty centimes apiece. The
collection is such as to make the spectator shudder to see holy things so
unholily treated; and it is difficult to conceive how, in this century,
when art has been carried to such a pitch that even our commonest jugs
and basons have assumed forms consistent with it, anyone, even the
lowest, can be satisfied with such designs and colouring as these things
display.
Returning homeward by the lower part of the town, we pass a _maison
religieuse_ dedicated to St Joseph, and in the garden see the good
little sisters joining their pupils, to the number of forty or fifty,
in a merry game of ‘Here we go round the mulberry-bush,’ and apparently
taking as much pleasure in the exercise as the youngest there. The church
and churchyard stand at this end of Rochefort. There is nothing in the
building to attract one’s notice, except that we agree that it is the
ugliest we have ever seen; but we walk round the little churchyard, the
paucity of graves in which speaks well for the climate of the place. The
crosses and railings, made of the commonest wood and in the most fragile
manner, are all rotting as they stand or lie (several having assumed the
recumbent position); and we are leaving the spot with the conviction that
we have wasted five minutes, when we come against a crucifix fastened by
heavy iron clamps against the wall of the church. A common iron cross,
rusty and red from damp and age, with a figure nailed on it of the most
perfect bronze, old and hard, and dark and bright, and as unchanged by
weather and exposure as on the day (perhaps hundreds of years ago) it was
first placed there.
Toiling up the street again, and examining the shops as we go, I say
that, much as I like Rochefort, I do not advise any one to come here in
order to purchase their wedding _trousseau_, or lay in a stock of winter
clothing. We look in vain for something to buy in remembrance of the
place; but can see nothing out of the way, except it is a yellow teapot,
holding at the least four quarts, and with a curled spout to prevent the
tea coming out too fast, which must be almost necessary with such a load
of liquid. The teapot is delicious, and quite unique; but scarcely worth,
we think, the trouble of transportation. We have but just decided this
matter to our satisfaction when we come upon a ‘miscellaneous warehouse,’
upon whose front is painted ‘_Cartes pour les grottes de Rochefort_,’
and remember that we must see the famous grotto, and turn in to ask
the price of admission. Five francs a-head; children half-price. We
think the charge is high; but Monsieur C— (to whom the grotto belongs)
takes us into his house and shows us prints of the different views
of its interior, which fire our imagination to that degree, that we
decide at once to see it the next morning. We look over a book also in
which visitors to the grotto have written down their first impressions;
and these testimonials excite our curiosity still further. A Persian
describes himself as having been suddenly transported into fairyland; and
can liken the vast caverns to nothing but the palace of his great master
the Sultan, and the various forms assumed by the stalactites to those
of lovely houris grouped about him. A French poet, in rapturous verse,
compares the grotto to the enchanted halls of the Arabian Nights, and the
stalactites to ‘frozen tears.’ Every traveller declares the sight to have
been more wonderful and beautiful than anything he has ever seen before,
until we become quite sorry to think we must put off seeing it until
the morning; and our expectations are heightened by the rapid assurance
of Monsieur C— (who always keeps his hands moving, and never stops to
consider his commas), that it is ‘_trèsbeautrèsbeautrèsbeau_!’ However,
we agree to return the next day at eleven o’clock, when he promises the
guides shall be in readiness for us; and we go home to another excellent
dinner, the pleasure of which is only marred by the fact that Thérèse
_will_ make us use the same knives and forks for every course; and we
haven’t the strength of mind to resist.
Yesterday I spoke to madame on the necessity of engaging someone during
the mornings to read French and German with the girls, as we shall most
likely be here for a month; and it is too long a time for them to be
idle. Madame did not think I should find a _demoiselle_ in Rochefort who
could instruct them; but there is a _professeur_ here who has passed all
his college examinations, and who, if he has the time, will doubtless be
very glad of the employment. I asked her to send for the _professeur_
that I might speak to him on the subject; and here, just as we have done
dinner, he arrives; for madame throws open the door, and with a certain
pride in her voice (pride that Rochefort should possess such an article),
announces ‘_Monsieur le Professeur_.’ I glance up, thinking of Charlotte
Brontë and her professor, and hoping this one may not prove as dirty and
seedy and snuffy, and, to my amazement, see standing on the threshold a
lad of about seventeen or eighteen, dressed in green trousers and a blue
blouse, and holding his cap in his hand. The two girls immediately choke,
and bury their faces in their books, which renders my task of catechising
rather a difficult one; and I glance at E— for aid, but his countenance
is almost level with the table as he pretends to draw. So I find there is
nothing to be done but to beg the _professeur_ to be seated,—a request
which he steadily refuses to comply with; and as he stands there,
twisting his cap in his hands, he looks so like a butcher-boy, that it is
a mercy I do not ask him what meat he has to-day.
But the poor young man is so horribly nervous, as he tells me that,
though qualified for a tutor, he has never taught before, that I have
not the heart to refuse him on account of his youth; besides, is he not
the sole _professeur_ in Rochefort? So I give him leave to come the next
morning, and try, at all events, what he can do with the girls; and he
looks very happy for the permission. And we see him a minute afterwards,
striding proudly down the street, whistling as he goes, and holding his
head half an inch higher for having ‘got a situation.’ Of course the
children make merry over him for the rest of the evening, and cannot
recall the appearance of their _professeur_ without shrieks of laughter;
but he comes the next morning, nevertheless, to commence his duties,
and proves to be quite as particular as older teachers, and much more
competent than some, and takes the youngest girl completely aback by
telling her she shall be punished if she is not steady.
At eleven o’clock the next morning we are all ready to view the grottoes,
and E— and I, with the two eldest children, start off on our expedition.
The way to their entrance lies through Monsieur C—’s park, which in
summer must be a very charming resort. He has collected here all the
wild animals indigenous to the Ardennes, and shows them to us as we
walk to the mouth of the grottoes. Close to his house he has a splendid
wolf and three foxes—the golden, silver, and common fox. I should have
preferred to keep these interesting specimens a little further off from
my own nose; but there is no accounting for tastes. In the aviary he has
squirrels, guinea-pigs, doves, pigeons, and the most magnificent pair
of horned owls I have ever seen. These birds, which are as fierce as
possible, have eyes of jet and amber, as big as half-crowns, and when in
their rage they spring at passers-by, they make a noise with their beaks
just like castanets.
A little farther up the park we come upon the Ardennes deer, which are
thicker built and less graceful than the English fallow-deer, with which
they are consorting; and a wild boar, with fierce tusks and a savage
grunt, wallowing in a _parterre_ of clay, which, nevertheless, knows his
master, and puts his ugly snout out to be scratched between the palisades
of his domain. Monsieur C— only conducts us as far as the entrance of
the grotto, and there delivers us over to the care of the guides, two in
number, who each carry a couple of petroleum lamps, and have ‘Grottes
de Rochefort’ written on their hatbands. They ask us if we will have
costumes to enter the caves with, and we decline, not knowing the dirt
we shall encounter; but we exchange our own hats for little, grey linen
ones, trimmed with a cockade and bunch of small red feathers in front,
made after the pattern of those adopted by the monkeys on the organs,
and in which we appear very comical to each other’s eyes. Everything is
ready, and down we go—down the first flight of steps, which is steep but
easy, and which, Monsieur C— shouts after us, will be the most difficult
descent of all (I wonder if he impresses that fable on all his visitors)
until the ivy and fern-covered entrance is passed, and we enter the
very mouth of the cave, which is yet light enough to let us see that
several such flights have still to be descended. We have hardly reached
the middle of the second, and daylight is not yet left behind us, when
E— calls out that he cannot breathe, and must go up into the fresh air
again. The guides insist that monsieur must be mistaken, and no one
is ever taken ill there. I insist, on the other hand, that monsieur’s
wishes must be complied with, and we must reaccompany him to the top,
which we do. I would rather not go back again then, and make the dark
pilgrimage alone with the children, but E— begs we will, and the girls
look disappointed; so we retrace our steps, leaving him in the park.
I confess that as I go down the second time I feel a little nervous, and
my limbs shake. I don’t like this going down, down, down into the shades
of eternal night, with no companions but two little children.
But at last we stand on level ground again. There is no light anywhere
except from the guides’ lamps, the foremost one (who is always spokesman)
waves his above his head, and introduces _la grande salle_. I look up
and around me, but all is black as pitch. I feel that I am standing on
broken flints and a great deal of mud; and as the guide’s lamp throws
its faint gleam here and there, I see that the cavern we stand in is
very vast and damp, and uncommonly like a huge cellar; but I can’t say I
see anything more. In another minute the guide has turned, and leads us
through a passage cut in the rock. We are not going up or downstairs now,
but picking our way over slippery stones and between places sometimes so
narrow and sometimes so low, that our shoulders get various bumps and
bruises, and the guide’s warning of ‘_Garde tête!_’ sounds continuously.
Every now and then we come upon a larger excavation, which is called
a _salle_, and given some name consequent on the likeness assumed by
the stalactites contained in it. Thus one is called _salle de Brahma_,
because it contains a large stalactite, somewhat resembling the idol
of that name. Another _salle du sacrifice_, because its principal
attraction is a large flat stone at the foot of which is another, shaped
sausage-wise, and entitled _tombeau de la victime_. We pace after the
guides through these cavernous passages for what appears to me miles, my
mind meanwhile being divided between fear that I should leave my boots
behind me in the slushy clay, or that either of my children should tumble
down or knock her head. Every cavern is like the other, and I look in
vain for stalactites which shall remind me of ‘houris grouped about the
sultan,’ or ‘frozen tears.’ The guides occasionally produce a fine effect
by burning a little red fire, or letting-off a rocket, or climbing singly
up the more perilous places, that we may watch the gradual ascent of
their flickering lamps, and judge of the height of the larger _salles_.
But I suppose the enthusiastic scribblers in the visitors’ book would
consider me the possessor of a very darkened intellect if they heard me
affirm that I have seen better effects on the stage, and climbed greater
heights with much more convenience. Perhaps I have not a sufficiently
appreciative soul for grottoes; but the greater part of the grotto of
Rochefort comes up exactly to my idea of a mine, and nothing more.
The ‘glittering’ stalactites are nowhere. The cave is lined with
stalactites, but (with the exception of a few white ones) they are all
of a uniform pale-brown colour, and have no idea of glittering or being
prismatic. The greatest wonder of the grotto is its vastness, which may
be estimated from the fact that we are two hours going over it, and then
have not traversed the whole on account of fresh works being carried
on in parts. We penetrate to its very depths to see the river and the
waterfall, but the mud is so excessive that we are compelled to stop, and
let the guide descend with his lamp and flash it over the water, which is
really very pretty, and, strange to relate, contains good trout.
Then we plough our way upwards again; up fungus-covered ladders, and wet,
slippery stairs, upon which it is most difficult to keep a footing, until
we arrive at decidedly the finest sight there—the _salle du sabbat_. Here
the guides send up a spirit-balloon, to show us the height and extent
of the vast cavern, and we are rather awe-struck, particularly as, in
order that we may see the full effect, the other guide plants us on three
chairs and takes away both the lamps, leaving us seated in the darkness,
on the edge of a precipice. The blackness is so thick about us that we
can almost _feel_ it; and the silence is that of death. My youngest girl
slips her little hand in mine, and whispers, ‘Mamma, supposing he weren’t
to come back again!’ and I can’t say the prospect pleases. However, the
balloon reaches the top of the cavern, and is hauled back again; and the
guide _does_ come back; and, whilst he is assisting his fellow to pack it
away, I sing a verse of ‘God save the Queen,’ for the children to hear
the echo, which is stupendous.