LE MANS.--ANCIENT CITY BY NIGHT.--THE
LUXURY OF BATHING.--CATHEDRAL OF ST.
JULIEN.--TOURS.--POITIERS.--ANGOULÊME.--BORDEAUX.--EN ROUTE
FOR BAYONNE.--A MERCANTILE DEFAULTER.--A LONELY REGION.--HOTEL
INTERIOR.--INGENIOUS INVENTION.--TABLE D'HÔTE.
At midnight Le Mans was reached, amidst a deluge of rain and an
insufficiency of street lamps. Gas, we believe, has found its way to
Jerusalem, but not to Le Mans; and yet Le Mans is a large and important
town, blessed with an enlightened and despotic government.
After settling ourselves, to our extreme inconvenience, in a vehicle
like an opera-box drawn side-ways by a horse and bells, we bumped and
jingled slowly on through long, dark streets, the houses in which were
all so large and gloomy that they looked like prisons, and in which
there appeared to be a general flushing of sewers.
Le Mans may or may not be the "trodden ground" our critics complain
of, but we are quite sure it was not so when we arrived there, for
not a living thing was seen in the great black town save a benighted
cat or two and one very ancient rag-picker. A more forsaken and
deserted-looking place could not be imagined--no, not even by
Daniel the Prophet, with all his experience of "the abomination of
desolation," &c.
The grey light of the skies showed us at last a great square opening
before us, with a lofty stone building like a war tower rising dark in
the midst. We stopped at an inn door in this square, and descended,
the opera-box making a vigorous plunge to assist us in the operation.
Repeated pulls at a cracked bell, which sounded dismally in some remote
depth of the old house, eventually produced the effect desired, for a
rattling of chains was heard, and then the heavy door swung slowly on
its hinges, sufficiently to admit of the protrusion of a man's head.
The head came out as far as the shoulders, and nothing more ghastly
could be conceived, as for a few seconds it remained there motionless
and isolated against the black background, like the decapitated skull
of some malefactor nailed to a gibbet, the face gleaming deadly in
the uncertain night-light. The dreary silence of the dark square was
broken only by the lonely cry of some distant watchman, pacing the old
streets here and there with a dull lamp, which served to deepen still
more the darkness beyond, whilst, high, gaunt, and spectral against the
dull grey air, loomed the fortress-like building. A gigantic lighted
clock was poised on a high tower, the long hands thereof making great
leaps of five minutes each along the dial, as if it were dozing,
and then suddenly waking and making up for lost time by desperate
strides. In fact, to anyone who had recently supped upon pork chops,
or to the cheerful mind of the late lamented Mrs. Anne Radcliffe, of
raw-head-and-bare-bones memory, this old tower and its clock might
have appeared as the Ogre Time, or some huge Cyclopean ghoul of night,
watching and gloating, with its burning eye, over the surely passing
hours of the thousand slumberers lying for a season sweetly unconscious
of the fleeting of life beneath, and counting each heave of breath
which as it passes must bring all nearer and nearer to its maw.
The waiter who belonged to the head before mentioned turned out to be
a most excellent young man, and, in his assiduous exertions to make
himself agreeable to apparently the first British traveller he had
ever beheld, danced about like an electrified frog. Indeed, we were
grateful enough for this very sprightliness of his, for it acted as a
corrective to the depressing effect of the entire establishment, which
was pervaded by an air of dull, forlorn gloom. The walls appeared to
be constantly in tears. The long cavernous passages and mysterious
corridors were made doubly dark by the sulky gleam of a consumptive
"short ten." The lofty bedrooms were provided with beds which had
too close a resemblance to four-post hearses, and their furniture in
general had too much of the faded grandeur of other days. The old
wooden staircases creaked audibly before we began to walk upon them,
as if some invisible ghost of a dead housemaid were waiting to show us
up to bed, and when we ventured upon them we found they were leaning
alarmingly on one side. We endeavoured as well as we could to keep in
the middle, but they were so unsteady that their movement produced a
sensation like that of mild intoxication or incipient sea-sickness.
We were not without dread lest, supposing the balustrades showed equal
signs of weakness, we might, if we did not hug the wall and coast along
it very carefully, be shovelled neck and crop into the abyss below. Can
anyone wonder, therefore, that in such a place we were grateful for
the sprightliness of our waiter, whose good spirits and lively antics
prevented us from indulging in depressing thoughts? Variety of any
kind is pleasing. Who has not heard of the gentleman who got into such
a depressed condition of mind from attending the debates in the House
of Lords and the burlesques at the London theatres, that, with the
view of obtaining a little beneficial change, he took occasional walks
in Brompton Cemetery, attended executions at the Old Bailey, or paid
frequent visits to an anatomical museum? It was the same gentleman who
was said always to carry an umbrella with an ivory death's-head as the
handle, who had a velvet coat made from a piece of his wife's pall, and
who took to singing the songs of Claribel.
Le Mans is a grand old town, stately, but mouldy and only half alive.
Throughout there is happily an absence of that white garish Parisian
element. No whitewash, gilded railings, or sculptured gewgaws offend
the genius of the spot. The solemn old houses and walls stand looking
down on the quiet streets as sadly as on that day when the last remnant
of the gallant Vendean army under Larochejaquelein, wearied with the
toils of long campaigns, was cut to pieces beneath them in the year
1793. The face of the old town seems as sorrowful now as when the
shrieks of dying women and children, remorselessly slaughtered before
it by the conquering Republicans, died away upon the air, on that day
when cannonades of grape and volleys of musketry swept through all the
streets, among a helpless crowd of the wretched wives and little ones
of the scattered Royalists, of whom ten thousand corpses lay red in
that awful sunset.
In the early morning we nearly frightened to death some good citizens
by bathing in the river Sarthe, and several crowded to the bank to
witness the last gasps of two insane victims to the love of ablution.
It was a fine warm day in September, yet the idea to them seemed
madness. However, this little adventure brought to light what Diogenes
had so long sought for--an honest man. As we were drying ourselves on
the river bank, beneath the shadows of the old cathedral on the height
above, a passer-by in course of conversation observed,--
"_Pour moi, messieurs_, I detest water--never touch it--_ni chaude, ni
froide_."
Now we like this blunt truthfulness, so much better than the big talk
of some people respecting their tubs and baths, who yet never go near
them. We remember, upon one occasion, in a country house there was a
gentleman who was always talking about the luxury of "tubbing," and
whose constant refrain was, "What a brute a man must be who doesn't
tub," &c. Being the occupant of the adjoining room to us, we happened,
quite by accident, one fine morning, upon hearing a tremendous
splashing and dashing, to look through the key-hole, and discovered,
much to our astonishment, our friend standing up, half dressed, in
knickerbockers, shirt, and diamond pin, squeezing a sponge into a
tin bath, and shouting in a very loud whisper (which would have made
his fortune in an "aside" on the stage), as if overpowered with the
freshness of the water, "Oh! how delightful! By Jove, how cold! Ahi!
phew! a--h! oh!"
The cathedral of St. Julien is a grand, imposing Gothic structure, grey
with the hoar of age. Its lofty towers, which are so richly ornamented
that they appear as if covered with fretwork, hang at a great elevation
above the city, crowning a height. In it we found the monument of
Berengaria of Sicily, Queen of Richard I. of England, and the tomb of
Charles of Anjou.
Le Mans has the honour of having given birth to Henry II., the
first Plantagenet king of England; and we suppose we ought here to
mention, what every one on earth must know, that his father Geoffroi
always wore in his cap a sprig of genêt, or broom, which grows
luxuriantly throughout Maine and Anjou, and hence the name of a race of
kings--Plante-a-genêt.
From Le Mans we took the railway to Tours. Upon nearing that city we
passed an old red château, where Louis XI. shut himself up, dreading,
like Oliver Cromwell and many great criminals, daily assassination.
Gates within gates, castle within castle, like a remarkably strong
Chinese ball-puzzle; such is the interior. On a plain near Tours--an
old story--Charles Martel beat the Saracens in 731. No one writes on
Tours who does not say, "If the Saracens had beaten Charles Martel, we
should all be keeping harems, smoking tchibouques, and praying on bits
of square carpets, or, whenever we had a moment or two to spare, on
turnpike roads," &c.
After we had passed Tours the country was flat, ugly, and very
uninteresting. Poitiers, which we reached in due course, is a
picturesque, battlemented old town, built on the tops of precipices,
the sides of hills, rocks, and ravines, with green slopes, gardens,
and river. We say nothing about the Black Prince, Lord Chandos, and
King John, at the battle of Poitiers. We wonder, indeed, if they were
ever there; for was there not a man who once wrote a book to prove that
there had been no such person as Napoleon?
After passing Angoulême, at which we stopped for a short interval,
it became too dark to see or read, and we tried to sleep; but soon
discovered what a quantity of hitherto unknown and extraordinary bumps
and sharp angles the human form possesses. In spite, however, of our
discomforts, the train rattled on, and we arrived at Bordeaux. After a
good night's rest, the disagreeable effects of our journey disappeared;
and getting up fresh and active in the morning, we set out to explore
the city. But what did we see? Docks, _et præterea nihil_!
As we were taking our seats in the train for Bayonne, we perceived
in the next carriage to us, guarded by three gendarmes, a pale,
middle-aged man of gentle exterior, at whom several persons at the
carriage window were hurling execrations. Being unfortunate in the
management of his affairs, he had attempted to maintain his position
by means which brought him within the clutch of the law, and the
consequence was loss and ruin, not only to himself, but also to many
who had placed entire confidence in his integrity. Now, doubtless, he
regretted his folly, and formed many good intentions as to the future;
but, alas, several years must pass over before he can put them into
practice, and when he emerges once more into life, the world will laugh
to scorn the fine sentiments of a man out of jail, and, securely
mailed in the panoply of their own good luck,--we beg its pardon, high
morality,--politely refer him to an observation of Seneca's:--"Quid est
turpius quam senex vivere incipiens?"[1]
However, every proverb has its reverse, "Ogni medaglia ha il suo
reverso;" and against Seneca we can pit Mr. Charles Reade, who thinks
it "never too late to mend."
We were roused from our reverie by a voice exclaiming, "En voiture,
messieurs!" and at the same time the whistle screamed, the bell rang,
and that great leveller, the railway train, glided off. In a few
minutes the spires and masts of Bordeaux had passed away, and with them
every vestige of the bustle and clang of busy life. How strange it
seemed that in so short a time we should have dashed into the midst of
lonely regions where the tracks of civilization seemed all but lost!
Onwards we scoured, over the desolate Landes, over brown trackless
moor, and through the gloom of forests. The leaden heavens seemed
stagnant and dead, and indeed a ray of sunlight or gleam of warmth in
such a scene would seem but a mockery to the heart. On, through desert
places where the wild bird and solitary wood-cutter alone quicken the
deadness of the silent wastes which spread away in dark expanse to the
horizon. Far and wide no life is seen, and no sign thereof, save an
occasional group of wretched hovels buried in the recesses of the black
woods, which are perceived only for a moment through a storm-torn gap
as we fly along and then are gone, leaving the wilderness again in all
its dead stillness under the fading light of the dreary skies.
The lights of Bayonne at length gladly broke upon us as the evening
darkened, and in a short time we were rattling with horse and bells
through the heavy stone gates, and over the moats and drawbridges of
the city walls. The old narrow streets, with their tall houses covered
with balconies, lattices, and coloured blinds, were a foretaste of
those to be seen in Spain. The rows of lighted shops, beneath heavy low
arcades built of hewn stone, and supported by stout pillars, brown with
age, were all crowded with busy passengers, garbed with sash, velvet
breech, and bonnet. The bright cafés--filled with loungers, small
politicians, and trim waiters, with their hair mowed to the roots--were
shedding on the roadway floods of yellow light.
On we rattled, over roads not paved yesterday, if ever paved at all,
amidst bumping and jingling, forced to listen from time to time to
periodic fits of shocking language addressed to the smoking horses,
gay in coloured trappings, and trotting us merrily along. Now we dived
into a narrow alley, black as pitch darkness could make it. Then we
twisted out of it so sharply, round a corner, that, had our hair not
been carefully oiled, it would have stood on end, and emerged into a
wide street full of gas lamps, illuminated windows, and rows of bright
green little trees, trimmed so artificially that they had as little
resemblance to their natural growing congeners as those in a child's
Noah's ark. It was pleasant, after our dreary day's journey, to find
ourselves thus hurrying, in the brilliant flare of the night lamps,
through a most picturesque old town, over bridges from which we could
see in the rapid waters below the twinkling reflection of a hundred
lights, along streets in which we passed companies of soldiers marching
to the music of drums and bugles, and through busy quays all alive with
bustle and loaded with merchandise. In fact,
"The city gates were opened; the market, all alive
With buyers and with sellers, was humming like a hive;
Blithely on brass and timber the craftsman's stroke was ringing;
And blithely o'er her panniers the peasant girl was singing."
And "blithely" we eventually entered the Hotel * * *, and sat down to
a remarkably good dinner of fresh sardines, wild boar, _paté de foie
de canard_, and a dish of _beccaficoes_. "Our bore," the inevitable
Cockney across the table, fired off a sickly joke at the expense of
those little birds, to the effect that, if we had never yet eaten
_beccaficoes_, we ought-to-learn (_ortolan_). Now really! Oh! who can
minister to the "mind diseased" that produces such monstrosities?
The hotel was a great square house, with a wonderful collection of keys
on a board by the entrance door, as if they had been fired there like
grape-shot out of a gun. The passages and staircases were liberally
supplied by day with sand and saliva, and by night with cockroaches of
remarkable size. Hanging on the walls of the _salle-à-manger_ were
advertisements of bull-fights to come off in various towns of Spain,
and also others of various hotels in different countries. There was one
of a boarding-house in Weymouth Street, Portland Place, London, with
a picture of the same. Now we do not wish to set up as art-critics,
but merely state that we have once or twice in the course of our lives
had occasion to find ourselves in that salubrious district, but don't
remember noticing any detached house or Italian villa in a park, with
palm trees waving over it, and a plantain in full growth. There was
another picture of a hotel in Granada, with the Moors walking about the
streets and conversing with the waiters at the door, as if Abderrhaman
was still residing in Spain.
In the courtyard of our inn a fountain was playing, and a vine formed a
large shady arbour for smokers and idlers beneath. There was not much
to complain of, and notwithstanding the general smell of garlic, and
an odour resembling that of steamboat cabins, with which the bedrooms
were perfumed, we slept most comfortably for a short time with calm
consciences and clean sheets, gratefully manufacturing a proverb for
the occasion, to the effect that fine feathers make fine beds, to
say nothing of good housemaids. We even glided into dreams, in which
we held conversations with individuals of every possible complexion,
dressed in scarlet Scotch bonnets, velveteen jackets, broken out into
a nettle-rash of metal buttons, red sashes, breeches, and hose, in
Basque, Spanish, French, English, and all sorts of patois, all at once,
and with incredible ease, coherence, and velocity. We say we slept
most comfortably for a short time, and one must have been very deaf,
or stolid, or philosophical,--in a word, insensible to all sorts of
disturbance,--to have slept comfortably after 2 A.M. in such a place.
For diligence after diligence coming from somewhere or other, and going
in the same direction, rolled by every quarter of an hour immediately
underneath our windows, accompanied with loud shouts, cracking of
whips, and jangling of bells.
Between the quarters of the hours a gentleman and his wife enlightened
the entire hotel with a domestic wrangle in one of the rooms in our
neighbourhood, and at 5 A.M. some person or persons overhead, probably
experimentalising with a cold tub for the first time in their lives,
apparently found it impossible to restrain themselves from giving vent
to the natural exhilaration produced by the bath in what seemed, by
the trampling they made, to be an Indian war-dance. Added to this,
there was a clock in our apartment which struck six when it should have
struck four, and eight when it should have struck six, thereby becoming
a source of much anxiety to the half-dormant mind, torturing it with
vague speculations when it should have been at rest.
The bedroom bell was ingenious enough, going off like an alarum when a
knob of wood fixed in the wall was touched; and the invention would be
still more valuable if it would at the same time induce any servants
to answer it. As it was, the only chance, after prodding it for a good
quarter of an hour without any other result than a sore thumb and a
great deal of noise, was to seat oneself in an arm-chair before it
with the latest newspaper, or some interesting book, and, the elbow
firmly pressed against the knob, so to remain, if needs be, for the
whole afternoon until some one below was sick of the rattle, and
condescended to come and inquire the cause of the summons.
A _table-d'hôte_ breakfast in places like Bayonne is very trying to
a delicate stomach, especially when an opposite lady is in the habit
of wearing a false nose, and when the gentlemen wear diamond rings
and very dirty wristbands. Individuals of excited imaginations may
possibly regale themselves with _potage à paté d'Italie_, but to minds
of ordinary level it appears but as some mystic and not very inviting
fluid with things like boiled gentles in it. _Rognons sautés en
champagne_ is a dish also considered by the sanguine as something quite
unique, whereas a philosopher (at all events at so early a meal as
breakfast) is apt to connect that condiment in a general way with old
hats and hot water.
FOOTNOTE:
[1] What is more miserable than to see an old man just entering on the
practice of virtue?
[Illustration: [++] Decorative Image]
[Illustration: [++] Decorative Image]