XXV.

"Cette, with its glistening houses white,

Curves with the curving beach away

To where the lighthouse beacons bright,

Far in the bay."

That stanza of Matthew Arnold's, which I hap-

pened to remember, gave a certain importance to the

half-hour I spent in the buffet of the station at Cette

while I waited for the train to Montpellier. I had left

Narbonne in the afternoon, and by the time I reached

Cette the darkness had descended. I therefore missed

the sight of the glistening houses, and had to console

myself with that of the beacon in the bay, as well as

with a _bouillon_ of which I partook at the buffet afore-

said; for, since the morning, I had not ventured to

return to the table d'hote at Narbonne. The Hotel

Nevet, at Montpellier, which I reached an hour later,

has an ancient renown all over the south of France, -

advertises itself, I believe, as _le plus vaste du midi_. It

seemed to me the model of a good provincial inn; a

big rambling, creaking establishment, with brown,

labyrinthine corridors, a queer old open-air vestibule,

into which the diligence, in the _bon temps_, used to

penetrate, and an hospitality more expressive than

that of the new caravansaries. It dates from the days

when Montpellier was still accounted a fine winter re-

sidence for people with weak lungs; and this rather

melancholy tradition, together with the former celebrity

of the school of medicine still existing there, but from

which the glory has departed, helps to account for its

combination of high antiquity and vast proportions.

The old hotels were usually more concentrated; but

the school of medicine passed for one of the attrac-

tions of Montpellier. Long before Mentone was dis-

covered or Colorado invented, British invalids travelled

down through France in the post-chaise or the public

coach to spend their winters in the wonderful place

which boasted both a climate and a faculty. The air

is mild, no doubt, but there are refinements of mild-

ness which were not then suspected, and which in a

more analytic age have carried the annual wave far

beyond Montpellier. The place is charming, all the

same; and it served the purpose of John Locke; who

made a long stay there, between 1675 and 1679, and

became acquainted with a noble fellow-visitor, Lord

Pembroke, to whom he dedicated the famous Essay.

There are places that please, without your being able

to say wherefore, and Montpellier is one of the num-

ber. It has some charming views, from the great pro-

menade of the Peyrou; but its position is not strikingly

fair. Beyond this it contains a good museum and the

long facades of its school, but these are its only de-

finite treasures. Its cathedral struck me as quite the

weakest I had seen, and I remember no other monu-

ment that made up for it. The place has neither the

gayety of a modern nor the solemnity of an ancient

town, and it is agreeable as certain women are agree-

able who are neither beautiful nor clever. An Italian

would remark that it is sympathetic; a German would

admit that it is _gemuthlich_. I spent two days there,

mostly in the rain, and even under these circum-

stances I carried away a kindly impression. I think

the Hotel Nevet had something to do with it, and the

sentiment of relief with which, in a quiet, even a

luxurious, room that looked out on a garden, I reflected

that I had washed my hands of Narbonne. The phyl-

loxera has destroyed the vines in the country that sur-

rounds Montpellier, and at that moment I was capable

of rejoicing in the thought that I should not breakfast

with vintners.

The gem of the place is the Musee Fabre, one of

the best collections of paintings in a provincial city.

Francois Fabre, a native of Montpellier, died there in

1837, after having spent a considerable part of his

life in Italy, where he had collected a good many

valuable pictures and some very poor ones, the latter

class including several from his own hand. He was

the hero of a remarkable episode, having succeeded

no less a person than Vittorio Alfieri in the affections

of no less a person than Louise de Stolberg, Countess

of Albany, widow of no less a person than Charles

Edward Stuart, the second pretender to the British

crown. Surely no woman ever was associated senti-

mentally with three figures more diverse, - a disqualified

sovereign, an Italian dramatist, and a bad French

painter. The productions of M. Fabre, who followed

in the steps of David, bear the stamp of a cold me-

diocrity; there is not much to be said even for the

portrait of the genial countess (her life has been written

by M. Saint-Rene-Taillandier, who depicts her as de-

lightful), which hangs in Florence, in the gallery of

the Uffizzi, and makes a pendant to a likeness of

Alfieri by the same author. Stendhal, in his "Me-

moires d'un Touriste," says that this work of art

represents her as a cook who has pretty hands. I am

delighted to have an opportunity of quoting Stendhal,

whose two volumes of the "Memoires d'un Touriste"

every traveller in France should carry in his port-

manteau. I have had this opportunity more than once,

for I have met him at Tours, at Nantes, at Bourges;

and everywhere he is suggestive. But he has the de-

fect that he is never pictorial, that he never by any

chance makes an image, and that his style is per-

versely colorless, for a man so fond of contemplation.

His taste is often singularly false; it is the taste of the

early years of the present century, the period that

produced clocks surmounted with sentimental "sub-

jects." Stendhal does not admire these clocks, but

he almost does. He admires Domenichino and Guer-

cino, and prizes the Bolognese school of painters be-

cause they "spoke to the soul." He is a votary of the

new classic, is fond of tall, squire, regular buildings,

and thinks Nantes, for instance, full of the "air noble."

It was a pleasure to me to reflect that five-and-forty

years ago he had alighted in that city, at the very inn

in which I spent a night, and which looks down on

the Place Graslin and the theatre. The hotel that was

the best in 1837 appears to be the best to-day. On

the subject of Touraine, Stendhal is extremely refresh-

ing; he finds the scenery meagre and much overrated,

and proclaims his opinion with perfect frankness. He

does, however, scant justice to the banks of the Loire;

his want of appreciation of the picturesque - want of

the sketcher's sense - causes him to miss half the

charm of a landscape which is nothing if not "quiet,"

as a painter would say, and of which the felicities

reveal themselves only to waiting eyes. He even

despises the Indre, the river of Madame Sand. The

"Memoires d'un Touriste" are written in the character

of a commercial traveller, and the author has nothing

to say about Chenonceaux or Chambord, or indeed

about any of the chateaux of that part of France; his

system being to talk only of the large towns, where he

may be supposed to find a market for his goods. It

was his ambition to pass for an ironmonger. But in

the large towns he is usually excellent company, though

as discursive as Sterne, and strangely indifferent, for a

man of imagination, to those superficial aspects of

things which the poor pages now before the reader are

mainly an attempt to render. It is his conviction that

Alfieri, at Florence, bored the Countess of Albany ter-

ribly; and he adds that the famous Gallophobe died

of jealousy of the little painter from Montpellier. The

Countess of Albany left her property to Fabre; and I

suppose some of the pieces in the museum of his

native town used to hang in the sunny saloons of that

fine old palace on the Arno which is still pointed out

to the stranger in Florence as the residence of Alfieri.

The institution has had other benefactors, notably

a certain M. Bruyas, who has enriched it with an extra-

ordinary number of portraits of himself. As these,

however, are by different hands, some of them dis-

tinguished, we may suppose that it was less the model

than the artists to whom M. Bruyas wished to give

publicity. Easily first are two large specimens of

David Teniers, which are incomparable for brilliancy

and a glowing perfection of execution. I have a weak-

ness for this singular genius, who combined the delicate

with the grovelling, and I have rarely seen richer

examples. Scarcely less valuable is a Gerard Dow

which hangs near them, though it must rank lower as

having kept less of its freshness. This Gerard Dow

did me good; for a master is a master, whatever he

may paint. It represents a woman paring carrots,

while a boy before her exhibits a mouse-trap in which

he has caught a frightened victim. The good-wife has

spread a cloth on the top of a big barrel which serves

her as a table, and on this brown, greasy napkin, of

which the texture is wonderfully rendered, lie the raw

vegetables she is preparing for domestic consumption.

Beside the barrel is a large caldron lined with copper,

with a rim of brass. The way these things are painted

brings tears to the eyes; but they give the measure of

the Musee Fabre, where two specimens of Teniers and

a Gerard Dow are the jewels. The Italian pictures are

of small value; but there is a work by Sir Joshua Rey-

nolds, said to be the only one in France, - an infant

Samuel in prayer, apparently a repetition of the pic-

ture in England which inspired the little plaster im-

age, disseminated in Protestant lands, that we used to

admire in our childhood. Sir Joshua, somehow, was

an eminently Protestant painter; no one can forget

that, who in the National Gallery in London has looked

at the picture in which he represents several young

ladies as nymphs, voluminously draped, hanging gar-

lands over a statue, - a picture suffused indefinably

with the Anglican spirit, and exasperating to a mem-

ber of one of the Latin races. It is an odd chance,

therefore, that has led him into that part of France

where Protestants have been least _bien vus_. This is the

country of the dragonnades of Louis XIV. and of the

pastors of the desert. From the garden of the Peyrou,

at Montpellier, you may see the hills of the Cevennes,

to which they of the religion fled for safety, and out

of which they were hunted and harried.

I have only to add, in regard to the Musee Fabre,

that it contains the portrait of its founder, - a little,

pursy, fat-faced, elderly man, whose countenance con-

tains few indications of the power that makes distin-

guished victims. He is, however, just such a personage

as the mind's eye sees walking on the terrace of the

Peyrou of an October afternoon in the early years of

the century; a plump figure in a chocolate-colored coat

and a _culotte_ that exhibits a good leg, - a culotte pro-

vided with a watch-fob from which a heavy seal is

suspended. This Peyrou (to come to it at last) is a

wonderful place, especially to be found in a little pro-

vincial city. France is certainly the country of towns

that aim at completeness; more than in other lands,

they contain stately features as a matter of course. We

should never have ceased to hear about the Peyrou, if

fortune had placed it at a Shrewsbury or a Buffalo. It

is true that the place enjoys a certain celebrity at

home, which it amply deserves, moreover; for nothing

could be more impressive and monumental. It consists

of an "elevated platform," as Murray says, - an im-

mense terrace, laid out, in the highest part of the town,

as a garden, and commanding in all directions a view

which in clear weather must be of the finest. I strolled

there in the intervals of showers, and saw only the

nearer beauties, - a great pompous arch of triumph in

honor of Louis XIV. (which is not, properly speaking,

in the garden, but faces it, straddling across the _place_

by which you approach it from the town), an equestrian

statue of that monarch set aloft in the middle of the

terrace, and a very exalted and complicated fountain,

which forms a background to the picture. This foun-

tain gushes from a kind of hydraulic temple, or _cha-

teau d'eau_, to which you ascend by broad flights of

steps, and which is fed by a splendid aqueduct,

stretched in the most ornamental and unexpected

manner across the neighboring valley. All this work

dates from the middle of the last century. The com-

bination of features - the triumphal arch, or gate; the

wide, fair terrace, with its beautiful view; the statue

of the grand monarch; the big architectural fountain,

which would not surprise one at Rome, but goes sur-

prise one at Montpellier; and to complete the effect,

the extraordinary aqueduct, charmingly fore-shortened,

- all this is worthy of a capital, of a little court-city.

The whole place, with its repeated steps, its balus-

trades, its massive and plentiful stone-work, is full of

the air of the last century, - _sent bien son dix-huitieme

siecle_; none the less so, I am afraid, that, as I read in

my faithful Murray, after the revocation of the Edict

of Nantes, the block, the stake, the wheel, had been

erected here for the benefit of the desperate Camisards.