As we approached the bridge of Serrieres it was evident that another
demonstration in our honour was imminent. On the bridge a small but
energetic crowd was assembled, and we could see a bouquet pendent from a
cord descending toward the point where our boat was expected to pass.
The projectors of that floral tribute cheered us finely as we came
dashing toward them; and up in our bows was great excitement--which
suddenly was intensified into anguish as we perceived that our admirers
had made a miscalculation: a fateful fact that was anticipated and
realized almost in the same instant--as we saw the bouquet level with
our deck but forty feet away a-beam! Yet good luck saved the day to us.
As we shot the bridge we also rounded a curve, and a moment after the
bow of the long _Gladiateur_ had gone wide of the bouquet the stern had
swung around beneath it and it was brought safe aboard. In the same
breath we had passed under and beyond the bridge and were sending up
stream to our benefactors our cheers of thanks.
When the discovery was made that a bottle was enshrined among the
flowers, and that upon the bottle was an inscription--necessarily a
sonnet, as we impulsively decided--our feeling toward Serrieres was of
the warmest. Without question, those generous creatures had sent us of
their best, and with a posy of verse straight from their honest hearts.
Only poets ministering to poets could have conceived so pretty a scheme.
But the eager group that surrounded the Majoral who held the bottle flew
asunder in wrath as he read out loudly, in place of the expected sonnet,
these words: "Quinine prepared by Cuminat at Serrieres"! And then our
feeling toward Serrieres grew much less warm. Yet I am not sure that
Cuminat was moved only by the sordid wish to advertise at our expense
his preparation of quinine. I am disposed to credit him in part with a
helpful desire to check the fever rising in the blood of our boat-load
of Southerners who each moment--as they slid down that hill-side of a
river--were taking deeper and stronger drafts of the heady sunshine of
their own Southern sun. On the other hand, I am forced to admit that had
his motive been pure benevolence his offering would not have been so
pitiably scant.
But the people of Tournon--to which generous town, and to the breakfast
provided by its cordial inhabitants, we came an hour before
noon--entreated us with so prodigal a liberality in the matter of
bottles that the questionable conduct of the Serrieres apothecary
quickly faded from our minds. In ancient times Tournon had a black
reputation for its evil-dealing with chance wayfarers along the Rhone,
and one's blood runs cold with mere thought of the horrors which went on
there in the times of the religious wars. But very likely because of an
honest desire to live down its own bad record--which I mention here
rather to its present credit than to its past shame--it now seems
determined to balance matters by manifesting toward passing travellers
the most obliging courtesy in the world. Certainly, we poets--coming
thither famished, and going thence full fed and sleekly satisfied--had
cause that day to bless its name.
As we came galloping around a curve in the river--I cannot insist too
strongly upon the dashing impetuosity that was the constant buoyant
undertone of our voyage--this Tournon the blessed shot up before us
perked out upon a bold little hill thrust forward into the stream: a
crowd of heavily-built houses rising around a church or two and a
personable campanile, with here and there bits of crenellated ramparts,
and higher still the tough remnant of a castle still fit to do service
in the wars. Indeed, it all was so good in colour--with its blendings of
green and grey shot with warm yellow tones; and its composition was so
excellent--with its sweep upward from the river to the castle
battlements--that to my American fancy (used rather to Mediaeval
semblances than to Mediaeval realities) it seemed to be temporarily
escaped from an exceptionally well-set operatic stage.
[Illustration: THE LANDING-PLACE AT TOURNON]
All Tournon was down at the water-side to meet us, and on the
landing-stage was the very Mayor: a lean and tri-coloured man who took
off his hat comprehensively to our whole company in a magnificent bow.
Notables were with him--the Sous-Prefect, the Mayor of Tain, the
Adjoint, leading citizens--who also bowed to us; but not with a bow like
his! Laurel garlands decorated the landing-stage; more laurel garlands
and the national colours made gay the roadway leading up the bank; and
over the roadway was a laurel-wreathed and tri-coloured triumphal
arch--all as suitable to welcoming poets and patriots, such as we were,
as suitable could be. As the _Gladiateur_ drew in to the bank there was
a noble banging of _boites_--which ancient substitute for cannon in
joy-firing still are esteemed warmly in rural France--and before the
Mayor spoke ever a word to us the band bounded gallantly into the thick
of the "Marseillaise."
With the _boite_ banging fitfully, with the band in advance playing "La
Coupe," the tri-coloured Mayor led off with the most distinguished lady
of our company upon his arm: and away we all went, under the triumphal
arch and up the garlanded roadway two by two--as though Tournon were a
Rhone-side Ararat and we were the animals coming out of the Ark. Our
entry was a veritable triumph; and we endeavoured (I think successfully)
to live up to it: walking stately through the narrow streets, made
narrower by the close-packed crowds pressing to see so rare a poetic
spectacle; through the cool long corridors of the Lycee; and so out upon
a prettily dignified little park--where, at a triad of tables set within
a garlanded enclosure beneath century-old plane-trees, our breakfast
was served to us to the accompaniment of bangs from the _boite_ and
musical remarks from the band. And all Tournon, the while, stood above
us on a terrace and sympathetically looked on.
In its adaptation to the needs of travelling poets the breakfast was a
master-stroke. It was simple, substantial, delicious; and in its
accompanying prodigal outpouring of red and white Hermitage, Cornas, and
Saint-Peray, the contrast with the bottle-niggardliness of Serrieres was
bravely marked. The Hermitage, from the hill-sides directly across the
river from Tournon, around the town of Tain, scarcely lives up to its
heroic tradition just now--the phylloxera having destroyed the old
vines, planted by the hermit of blessed memory, and the new vines having
in them still the intemperate strength of youth. Yet is it a sound rich
wine, in a fair way to catch up again with its ancient fame.
While we feasted, the _boite_ and the band took turns in exploding with
violence; and when, with the filet, the band struck up "La Coupe" away
we all went with it in a chorus that did not die out entirely until well
along in the galantine. The toasts came in with the ices, and on the
basis of the regional champagne, Saint-Peray--sweet, but of good
flavour--that cracked its corks out with the irregular volleyings of a
line of skirmishers firing in a fog. The tri-coloured Mayor on behalf of
Tournon, and Paul Arene and delightful Sextius Michel on behalf of the
Felibrige and the Cigaliers, and M. Maurice Faure, the Deputy, on behalf
of the Nation at large, exchanged handsome compliments in the most
pleasing way; and the toasts which they gave, and the toasts which other
people gave, were emphasized by a rhythmic clapping of hands in unison
by the entire company--in accordance with the custom that obtains always
at the feasts of the Felibres.
But that was no time nor place for extended speech-making. All in a
whiff our feast ended; and in another whiff we were up and off--whisking
through the Lycee corridors and the crowded streets and under the
triumphal arch and so back on board the _Gladiateur_. The Mayor, always
heroically ablaze with his patriotic scarf of office, stood on the
landing-stage--like a courteous Noah in morning dress seeing the
animals safely up the Ark gang-plank--and made to each couple of us one
of his stately bows; the _boite_ fired a final salvo of one round; the
band saluted us with a final outburst of the "Marseillaise"; everybody,
ashore and afloat, cheered--and then the big wheels started, the current
caught us and wrenched us apart from all that friendliness, and away we
dashed down stream.