It was in the full flame of noon on a hot June day that we arrived at the
headquarters which I had chosen for my second summer in Périgord. It was
a little château, of which I was to occupy a small wing, and also a low
building that was quite detached--all very plain and rustic, as, indeed,
most of the really old châteaux that are still inhabited are. At this
burning hour the place seemed as quiet as the ideal retreat of a literary
hermit could be. In the large old-fashioned garden, where magnolias and
firs mingled with all kinds of fruit-trees, and lettuce-beds were fringed
with balsams, golden apricots hung upon the branches that were breaking
with their weight, and seemed to say: 'There is nobody here to eat us. We
are quite tired of waiting to be gathered.'
Suddenly there was a great noise of barking, and three or four dogs that
had smelt or heard strangers rushed through the archway that led to the
court, which was so much like a farm-yard that no one would know the
difference from the description.
'Mees! Mees! Black! Black!' cried a voice from within.
There was nothing in the sound of these words to cause astonishment, for
most French dogs that move in good society have English names. If you were
to call out at any respectable gathering of these animals, whether in the
North or the South, 'Fox,' 'Stop,' 'Black,' 'Mees' (not Miss), the chances
are that they would all try to reply at once.
After the dogs came bare-footed domestics of both sexes, who stared at us
wonderingly, while saluting politely, and evidently not wishing to show
their curiosity. Then, when we entered the court, we were met by a great
many fowls, ducks, and turkeys of various ages. Not a few had apparently
just jumped out of their shells. Lastly came the master and mistress of
the house, advancing in the slow and stately style of the times when the
drawbridge would have had to be lowered, but moving in the midst of the
poultry. They were gracious and hospitable, and very soon we settled down,
altogether well pleased with our new quarters.
Here we were surrounded by trees just as Robinson Crusoe was by his grove
when it had grown tall and thick. Now, the traveller in Southern France who
lingers as I am wont to linger in my wanderings, will probably have cause
to pine, as I have pined, for trees about his house to shelter him from the
fury of the summer sun. There are few houses that are not hovels or ruins
to be found, except where the land is fertile, and wherever it repays
labour the owner loathes a tree that produces nothing but its wood. Thus
we get those wide, burning plains, where so few trees are to be seen save
poplars along the watercourses and walnuts bordering the roads. Even these
become rare, as in journeying farther south the last low buttresses of the
rocky highlands are left behind.
Here, close to this retreat that I had chosen on the banks of the Isle,
some twenty miles below Périgueux, rose, on the opposite side of the river,
high cliffs of white limestone with wooded brows. The château was on a
small island formed by a curve of the river under the cliffs, and a short
canal drawn across the loop to facilitate the navigation of the Isle.
A very lazy kind of navigation it was. Two or three barges would pass in a
day on their way to Périgueux or Bordeaux. They were of considerable size,
and were capable of some sea-faring, but their masts were now laid flat,
and they were towed along at the rate of two or three yards a minute by
a lean and melancholy horse that had ceased to care for cursing, and was
almost indifferent to beating. As the navigation had been nearly killed by
the railway, the canal was allowed to fill itself with water-plants, which
were interesting to me, but exceedingly hurtful to the temper of the
bargees. They vented their fury upon the engineer, who was absent, and the
horse that was present--unfortunately for the poor brute, for somehow he
seemed to be looked upon as a representative of the negligent functionary.
'You appear to be having a bad time,' said I one day to a great dark bargee
who was streaming from every pore, as much from bad temper as from the
exertion of cracking his whip, and whose haggard horse looked as if he
would soon break off in the middle from the strain of trying to move the
barge, which was stuck in the weeds.
'A bad time of it! I believe you. _Sacr-r-r-re!_ If I could only send that
pig of an engineer to Nouméa I should be a happy man!'
If wishes could have wafted him, he would have gone farther than New
Caledonia long before.
One day, far on in the summer, this engineer actually appeared upon the
canal in his steam yacht, and there was great excitement in the country.
The peasants left their work in the fields and ran to the banks to gaze at
him. He did not go very far before he got stuck in the weeds himself. Then
he reversed his engine, made back as fast as he could, and was seen no
more.
But I am going on too fast. I have not yet described the château. The
picture of it is clearly engraved upon the memory, and a very pretty
picture I still think it; more so now, perhaps, than when the reality was
before me, for such is the way of the mind. I can see the extinguisher
roofs of the small towers through openings in the foliage rising from a
sunny space enclosed by trees. I can see the garden, with its old dove-cot
like a low round tower, its scattered aviaries, its rambling vines that
climb the laden fruit-trees, its firs, magnolias, great laurels, its
glowing tomatoes and melons, its lettuces and capsicums and scattered
flowers, all mingled with that carelessness which is art unconscious of
its own grace; its daedalian paths, its statues so quaintly placed in
unsuspected corners, its--well, the picture is finished, for now begins the
effort to recall its details. The eye's memory is a judicious painter that
never overcrowds the canvas. I can see on that side of the building, which
looks upon a much wilder garden, where peach and plum trees stride over
grassy ground adjoining the filbert-grove that dwindles away into the
wooded warren, a broad line of tall nettles in the shade against the wall.
Hard by, on the line--so it was said--of the filled-up moat, is a row of
ancient quinces, with long crooked arms, green, gray, or black with moss
and lichen, stretching down to the tall grass, where in the dewy hours of
early darkness the glow-worms gleam.
This little château was never a stronghold to inspire an enemy with much
respect; it was rather a castellated manor-house, dating from the times
when even the residences of the small nobility were fortified. Marred as it
had been by alterations made in the present century without any respect for
the past, it was still very interesting. In one of the towers, said to be
of the fourteenth, and certainly not later than the fifteenth, century, was
a chapel on the ground-floor with Gothic vaulting, and which still served
its original purpose. A contemporaneous tower flanking the entrance
contained the old spiral staircase leading to the upper rooms. I often
lingered upon it in astonishment at the mathematical science shown in its
design, and the mechanical perfection of its workmanship. What seemed to be
a slender column round which the spiral vaulting turned was not really
one, for each of the stone steps was so cut as to include a section of the
column as a part of its own block. The contrivances by which this staircase
_en colimaçon_ was made to hold together, and to hold so well as to have
lasted several hundred years, with a promise to continue in the same way
another century or two, were deftly hidden from the eye of those unversed
in such technicalities. In the hollow at the foot of the stairs was what
I took to be a very old and rough christening font, such as I had seen in
village churches. But it was not that; it was called a _pierre à l'huile_.
Its purpose a long time ago was to receive the oil taken from the first
pressing of walnuts after the annual gathering. Then the priests came and
fetched what they wanted of it to serve for the rites of the Church during
the year.
All this summer we lived out of doors, except at night. Even Rosalie, our
servant, did most of her cooking in the open air with the aid of a portable
charcoal stove, which she placed in the shade of some noble plane-trees
that were planted by accident on the day of Prince Louis Napoléon's _coup
d'état_. They were already tall and strong when his Will-o'-the-wisp, which
he had mistaken for a star, sank in the bloody swamp of Sedan. When the
rising wind announced a storm, the swaying branches shed their dry bark,
which was piled upon the hearth indoors, where a cheerful blaze shot up if
by chance the rain fell and the air grew chilly. But very seldom did even a
shower come to moisten the parched land and cool the heated air. Thus the
plane-trees came to look upon the stove beneath them as a fixture.
These open-air kitchens are by no means uncommon in Southern France during
the hot months. I have a pleasant recollection of dining one scented
evening in May with my friend the Otter at Beynac in his garden
terraced upon rocks above the Dordogne. The table was under a spreading
chestnut-tree in full bloom. Not many yards away the swarthy Clodine had
her kitchen beneath an acacia. Strange as it may seem, the hissing of
her frying-pan as she dropped into it the shining fish did not mingle
unpoetically with the murmur of lagging bees overhead and the soothing
plaint of the river running over its shallows below. Nor, when the purple
flush faded on the water's face, and little points of fire began to show
between branches laden with the snow of flowers, did the fragrant steam
that arose from Clodine's coffee-pot make a bad marriage with the amorous
breath of all the seen and unseen blossoms. What is there better in life
than hours such as those?
But now I am by the Isle. The plane-trees are on the edge of a little dell,
in the centre of which is a smooth space encircled by many trees, forming a
dense grove. A rough table has been set up here with the aid of planks and
tressels. It is our dining-table, and the centre of the grove is our
_salle à manger._ Wrens and blackcaps hop about the branches of the
filbert-bushes, and when the _métayer's_ lean cat comes sneaking along,
followed by a hungry kitten that is only too willing to take lessons in
craft and slaughter, the little birds follow them about from branch to
branch, scolding the marauders at a safe distance, and giving the alarm to
all the other feathered people in the grove. Here the nightingales warble
day and night until they get their young, when, finding that hunting for
worms and grubs to put into other beaks than their own is very prosaic
business, they only sing when they have time to fly to some topmost twig
and forget that they are married.
When the sun is near setting, a sound very different from the warble of a
bird is heard close by. It is some leader of a frog orchestra in the sedges
of the canal giving the first note. It is like a quirk of gluttony just
rousing from the torpor of satisfaction. The note is almost immediately
taken up by other frogs, and the croaking travels along the canal-banks as
fire would if there were a gale to help it. But the music only lasts a few
minutes, for the hour is yet too early for the great performance. The frogs
are only beginning to feel a little lively. It is when the sun has gone
quite down, and the stars begin to twinkle upon the water, that the ball
really opens. Then the gay tumult seems to extinguish every other sound,
and to fill the firmament. Oh! they must have a high time of it, these
little green-backed frogs that make so much noise throughout the warm
nights of June. Sometimes I creep into my canoe and paddle by the light of
moon or stars as noiselessly as I can along the fringe of sedges and flags
and bullrushes, hoping to watch them at their gambols. But the frog is a
very sly reptile, and you must stay up very late indeed in order to be a
match for him in craft, unless you dazzle his eyes with the light of a
torch or lantern. Then he is a fool in the presence of that which is out of
the order of his surroundings, and his amazement or curiosity paralyzes his
muscles. It is in this way that those who want the jolly frog just to eat
his hind-legs _à la poulette_ or otherwise catch him with the hand, unless
they have the patience and the cruelty to fish for him with a hook baited
with a bit of red flannel.
Now I will speak of my own hermitage, my ideal nook for writing, reading,
and doing nothing, which, after much wandering and vain searching, I found
at length here. Yes, I found it at last; and I much fear that I shall never
find another like it. It lay at the back of the château, beyond the shaded
nettles and the ancient quinces. My ordinary way to it was through a piece
of waste, which, with unintentional sarcasm, was called the 'Little Park.'
It was overgrown by burdocks, to which it had been abandoned for years--who
could tell how many?--and was rambled over by turkeys, guinea-hens, and
other poultry. Then I passed through a little gate, crossed another bit of
waste that was neither lawn nor field, skirted a patch of buckwheat, and
entered a small wood or shrubbery, where plum and filbert trees grew with
oaks and beeches, until I came to water. This was the _vivier_ of the
château--fishpond, long drawn out like a canal, and fed by a spring, but
which had been left to itself until it was nearly shaded over by alders
and other trees. At the end farthest from all habitations was a little
structure built of stones, open on one side, and with small orifices in
the three remaining walls. These could be closed, and yet they were not
windows. Their purpose was much more like that of loopholes in a mediaeval
barbican. They were to enable the man inside to watch the movements
of migratory birds, and to send his shot into the thick of them when,
unsuspecting danger, they chanced to come within range. The little building
was an _affût_. Near to it was a sort of fixed cage, intended for decoy
birds, but it had long been without tenants when I took possession of this
refuge from all the human noises of the world. The other sounds did not
worry me, although they often drew me from my work. The splash of a fish
would take me to the water's edge, where I would watch the small pikes
lying like straight roots that jut from the banks under water. The cooing
of the little brown turtles in the trees overhead, the movements of a pair
of kingfishers that would often settle close by upon an old stump, the
magpies and jays, and especially the oriels, would make my thoughts
wander amongst the leaves while the ink was drying in the pen. The oriels
tantalized me, because I could always hear them in the crests of the trees,
until, about the middle of August, they went away on their long journey
to the South, but could very rarely catch sight of their gold and black
plumage. Although they will draw near to gardens to steal fruit when they
have eaten the wild cherries, they are among the most suspicious and wary
of birds.
The oriel is a strange singer. It generally begins by screeching harshly;
then follow three or four flute-like notes, which seem to indicate that the
bird could be a musician if it would only persevere. But it will not take
the trouble. It goes on repeating its 'Lor-e-oh!' just as its tree-top
companions, the cicadas, keep up their monotonous creaking.
From my cabin I could see all the lights, colours, and shadows of the day
change and pass, but the sweetest music of the summer hours was heard when
the soft sunshine of evening fell in patches on the darkening water, and
on the green grass on each side of the brown path strewn with last year's
trodden leaves.
Sometimes a hedgehog would creep across the narrow path, shaded with
nut-bushes, oaks, and alders towards the water, and at night--I was often
there at night--the glow-worms gleamed all about upon the ground, and there
were mysterious whisperings whose cause I could not trace. Yes, it was an
ideal literary hermitage, but as perfection is not to be found anywhere
on land or water, even this spot had its drawback. There were too many
mosquitoes. My friend the owner of the château often said to me, '_La
moustigue de l'Isle n'est pas mêchante;_' but on this point I could not
agree with him. I bore upon me visible signs of its wickedness; but in
course of time I and the '_mostique de I'Isle_' lived quite harmoniously
together in the little shanty under the trees.
Where the weedy and shady avenue leading to the château made an angle with
the highroad, there was often a caravan or tilt-cart stationed for days
together. Sometimes it was the travelling house of a tinker and his family;
in which case the man was generally to be seen working outside upon his
pots and pans in the shade of a tree. Sometimes it belonged to a party of
basket and rustic-chair makers, who gathered the reeds and hazel-sticks
that they needed as they passed through the country. Some were gipsies, and
some were not; but all were baked by the sun almost to the colour of Moors.
Having a taste for nomadic life myself, I used to stay and talk to these
people from time to time; but none of them interested me so much as the
wandering cobbler and his dog, whose acquaintance I had made higher up the
country amongst the rocks.
I can still see them both in the shade of the old gateway; the man seated
in the entrance of the little tower, where, at the top of the spiral
staircase, is the village prison; the dog lying with his nose upon his paws
just within the line drawn by the gateway's shadow across the dazzling
road. They both came one evening and took up their position here with as
much assurance as if it had been theirs by right of inheritance. They soon
set to work, the man mending boots and shoes, and the dog making himself
disagreeable to all the male members of the canine population for a
couple of miles or so around. Until the cobbler's companion settled down
comfortably, he had several exhilarating fights with local dogs that looked
upon him as an intruder and an impostor. He really was both. He had no
great courage, but he had grown impudent and daring from the day that he
had first worn a collar armed with spikes. When his enemies had taken a few
bites at this, they came to the conclusion that there was something very
wrong in his anatomy. After the first encounter they were not only willing
to leave him alone, but were exceedingly anxious to 'cut' him when they met
him unexpectedly. They approached the gateway as little as possible; but
when they were obliged to pass it, they drew their tails under them, showed
the whites of their eyes, and having crept very stealthily to within ten
yards or so of the archway where the interloper appeared to be dozing, they
made a valiant rush towards the opening. Notwithstanding these precautions,
the cobbler's dog, which had been watching them all the while out of the
corner of one eye, was often too quick for them.
Man and dog were ludicrously alike both in appearance and character. The
beast was one of the ugliest of mongrels, and the man might well have been
the final expression of the admixture of all races, whose types had been
taken by destiny from the lowest grades of society. They were both grizzly,
thick-set, and surly. They both seemed to have reached the decline of
life with the same unconquerable loathing of water, except as a means of
quenching thirst. The dog, although some remote bull-dog ancestor had
bequeathed him short hair, had bristles all over his face just like his
master. They were a couple of cynics, but they believed in one another, and
loved one another with an affection that was quite edifying. The dog wished
for nothing better than to lie hour after hour near his master, hoping
always, however, for an occasional fight to keep him in health and spirits.
The cobbler did nothing to make himself liked by the inhabitants, but he
could afford to work more cheaply than others who were 'established,' and
who had a wife and children to keep; consequently the pile of old boots and
shoes that looked quite unmendable rose in front of him, and for three or
four weeks he remained in the same place stitching and tapping. Having
locked up his things at night in the tower--he had obtained permission to
make this use of it--he disappeared with his dog, and what became of them
until next day was a mystery.
I admired the blunt independence and practical philosophy of this homeless
man. Although he was disagreeable to others, he was on good terms with
himself, and seemed quite satisfied with his lot. If, when he had named his
price for mending a pair of shoes, anybody tried to beat him down, he would
say, 'Take them and mend them yourself!' His incivility obtained for him a
reputation for honesty, and his prices were soon accepted without a murmur.
He talked to nobody unless he was obliged to do so, and by his moroseness
he came to be respected. I managed to draw him into conversation once by
feigning to be much impressed by the comeliness and amiable nature of his
dog, and he then told me that he had been wandering ever since he was a boy
in Languedoc and Guyenne, stopping in a village as long as there was
work to do and then moving on to another. Wherever people wore boots or
shoes--if it were only on Sundays--there was always something to be done by
working cheaply.
The silent cobbler might have kept his open-air shop longer than he did in
the shadow of the mediaeval gateway, if his dog had not quarrelled with the
sole representative of police authority for having put on his gala uniform,
which included a cocked-hat and a sword. For this want of respect the
animal was imprisoned in the room of the tower, to the great joy of all the
other dogs, but to the intense grief of his master, who found it impossible
to turn a deaf ear to the plaintive moans that reached him from above. And
thus it came to pass that they went away together rather suddenly in search
of a gateway somewhere else, the dog earnestly praying, after his fashion,
that it might not be one with a tower.
One June morning, soon after sunrise, twenty-seven mowers came to the
château to cut the grass in the great meadow lying between the river under
the cliffs and my moat--I called it mine because it was almost made over to
me for the time being, together with the bit of wood and the cabin. Each
mower brought with him his scythe, an implement of husbandry which in
France is in no danger of being classed with agricultural curiosities of
the past. Here the reaping and the mowing machine make very little progress
in the competition between manual and mechanical labour. In the southern
provinces, few owners of the soil have ever seen such contrivances. People
who cling to the poetic associations of the scythe and the sickle--and who
does not that has been awakened by their music in his childhood?--must not
cry out against the laws which have caused the land of France to be divided
up into such a multitude of small properties, for it is just this that
preserves the old simplicity of agriculture as effectually as if some
idyllic poet with a fierce hatred of all machines were the autocratic ruler
of the country. Whether the nation gains or loses by such a state of things
is a question for political economists to wrangle over; but that the
artist, the seeker of the picturesque, the romantic roamer, and the
sentimental lover of old custom gain by it can hardly be denied.
Some of the mowers were men of sixty, others were youths of seventeen or
eighteen: all were contented at the prospect of earning nothing, but of
being treated with high good cheer. Now, victuals and drink are a great
deal in this life, but not everything, and these men would not have come
on such terms had they not been moved by a neighbourly spirit. They were
themselves all landowners, or sons of landowners. Had wages been given, two
francs for the day would have been considered high pay, and the food would
have been very rough. No turkeys would have had their throats cut; no
coffee and rum would have been served round. In short, this haymaking day
was treated as an annual festival.
A goodly sight was the long line of mowers as their scythes swept round and
the flowery swathes fell on the broad mead in the tender sunshine, while
the edges of the belt of trees were still softened by the morning mist.
After the mowers, all the workers employed on the home-farm, men, women,
and boys, entered the field to turn the swathes, which in a few hours were
dried by the burning sun. On the morrow a couple of oxen drew a creaking
waggon into the field, and when the angelus sounded from the church-tower
in the evening the haymaking was over. But I have not yet described the
mowers' feast.
At about ten o'clock the big bell that hangs outside the château is rung,
and the mowers, dropping their scythes, leave the field and troop into the
great kitchen, which has changed so little for centuries. The pots and pans
hanging against the walls, and the pieces of bacon from the beams, have
been renewed, but not much else. There is the same floor paved with stones,
now much cracked and worn into hollows, the same hearth and broad chimney
with hanging chain; and the long table and benches stretching from end to
end, although their age is uncertain, were certainly fashioned upon the
exact model of others that preceded them. Richard Coeur-de-Lion, when
campaigning in Guyenne, may have sat down many a time to such a table as
this, and to just such a meal as the one that is about to be served to the
mowers, with the exception of the coffee and rum.
Let us take a look into the great caldrons, which appear to have come out
of Gargantua's kitchen. One contains two full-sized turkeys and several
fowls, another a leg of pork, and a third a considerable portion of a calf.
Then there is a caldron of soup, made very 'thick and slab.' Home-baked
loaves, round like trenchers, and weighing 10lb. each, are on the side
table, together with an immense bowl of salad and a regiment of bottles
filled with wine newly drawn from the cask.
In the evening, when all the grass has been cut, there is another and a
greater feast. The work being done, the men linger long at the table.
Then all the household is assembled in the great kitchen, including the
_châtelain_ and _châtelaine_, and the young men who are known to have
voices are called upon to sing. They do not need much pressing, for what
with the heat of the sun during the day, then the wine, the coffee and rum,
their blood is rushing rather hotly through the veins. One after another
they stand up on the benches and give out their voices from their sturdy
chests, which are burnt to the colour of terra-cotta. They make so much
noise that the old warming-pan trembles against the wall. Although they
all speak patois among themselves, they are reluctant to sing the songs of
Périgord in the presence of strangers. The young men are proud of their
French, bad as it is, and a song in the café-concert style of music and
poetry fires their ambition to excel on a festive occasion like this,
whilst their patois ditties seem then only fit to be sung at home or in the
fields. At length, however, they allow themselves to be persuaded, and
they sing in chorus a 'Reapers' Song,' composed long ago by some unknown
Périgourdin poet, who was perhaps a jongleur or a troubadour. The notes are
so arranged as to imitate the rhythmic movements of the reaper: first the
drawing back of the right arm, then the stroke of the sickle, and lastly,
the laying down of the cut corn. There is something of sadness as well as
of joy in the repeated cadences of the simple song, and it moves the heart,
for now the old men join in, and the sound gathers such strength that the
little martins under the eaves must be pressing troubled breasts against
their young.
This château had remained in the same family for centuries, and the actual
owner, although by no means indifferent to the noble exploits of his
ancestors, had long ago settled down to the life of an agricultural
gentleman, and devoted what energy may have come down to him from the
Crusaders to the cultivation of tobacco, the improvement of stock, the
rearing of pigeons and poultry, the planting of trees, and a great deal
more belonging to the same order of interest. He was a strongly marked type
of the _gentilhomme campagnard_, in whom blue blood combines perfectly with
rustic tastes and simplicity of manners. Like most men who live greatly to
themselves, he had his hobbies, and they were all of a very respectable
kind. One was to surround himself with trees; another was to have all kinds
of captive birds about him. I was never able to know exactly how many
aviaries he possessed, for I was always finding a fresh one curiously
hidden in some neglected corner. He liked to mix up all sorts of birds
together, such as pigeons, doves--tame and wild--blackbirds, linnets,
canaries, chaffinches, sparrows, tomtits--no, the tomtits had been turned
out. I asked why.
'Because,' said M. de V., 'there is no bird so wicked for its size as the
titmouse. It pecks other birds with which it is shut up so often in the
same part of the head that at length it makes a hole and picks out the
brains.'
He used to catch his birds by means of a long net, and his favourite place
for spreading it was along the side of the patch of buckwheat which was
sown to feed the captives. He was a true lover of birds, and by observing
them had stored up in his mind a fund of curious knowledge respecting their
characters and habits. He only worked a portion of his land with the aid
of the servants of the château; the rest was farmed on the system of
_métayage_, for which he had a very strong liking. He said it was far
preferable from the landlord's point of view to leasing, because the owner
of the soil remained absolute master of his property. He could take care
that nothing was done which did not please him, for the _métayer_ or
_colon_ was on no firmer footing than that of an upper servant. If the
landlord was not satisfied with the manner in which his land was treated,
or if he suspected his _métayer_ of trying to take an unfair advantage of
him in the division of proceeds, all he had to do was to change him for
another. But it was the interest of both to work well together, and it
was the duty of the landlord to assist the _métayer_ as much as possible,
especially when times were hard.
On this estate the _colons_ were housed free, but they paid one-third of
the taxes. At the time of sowing, the seed was found by the landlord, but
the colon returned half of the amount when the crop was gathered.
_Métayage_, or the system of sharing results between the landowner and the
labouring peasant, still flourishes in France, notwithstanding the severe
denunciations passed upon it by various writers. If it were a very bad
system, it would have fallen into disuse long before now, for although the
French have a tendency to keep their wheels in old ruts, they are as keen
as any other people in protecting their own interests. It is a system that
would soon become impossible without trustfulness and honesty. On both
sides there must be fair dealing. The _colon_ must feel that the landlord
will help him in time of trial and need, and the landlord must feel that
the _colon_ is not trying to cheat him. In the great majority of cases, the
man who does the ploughing, the sowing and the harvesting quite realizes
that honesty with him is the best policy, and the owner of the soil knows
that it is to his interest to support his _métayer_, and encourage him with
judicious aid when the times are bad. The _métayer_, who has hope of making
a little money over and above what is barely sufficient to support himself
and his family, and knows that results will depend largely upon his
own sagacity and industry, works with a steady zeal that it would be
unreasonable to expect of the hired labourer, who, having his measured
wage always in his mind's eye, has no incentive to do more than what is
rigorously expected of him.
It may happen that the _métayer_, with all his labour--carried sometimes
to an extreme that degrades the man physically and mentally--and all
his frugality, which so often entails constitutional enfeeblement and
degeneration, because the nutrition is not sufficient to correct the
exhaustion of toil, obtains really less value for his work than an English
farm labourer, and is not so well housed; but, on the other hand, he enjoys
a large amount of liberty and independence, and has the hope, if he is
young, of being able to save money, buy some land, and become his own
master. A _métairie_ is seldom so large as to be beyond the working
capabilities of a man and his family. In Guyenne an estate of a few
hundred acres, if the land is productive, is often divided up into several
_métairies_.
Farm labourers are not an overfed or overpaid class in Périgord. Food that
is almost bread and vegetables, and a wage of one franc a day, are the
ordinary conditions on which men work from sunrise to darkness. Lodging is
not always included. I have known men in the full vigour of life earning
only the equivalent of ninepence halfpenny a day, paying rent out of it,
and presumably supporting a wife and children.
The daily life at the château was quite old fashioned in its simplicity.
Everybody rose with the sun, or very soon afterwards. At nine o'clock the
bell in the court rang for the principal meal, which was called dinner.
Kings dined at about the same hour in the times of the Crusaders. Early in
the afternoon the bell rang again. This was for _collation_, a very light
repast, which was often nothing more than salad or fruit and a _frotte_--a
piece of crusty bread rubbed with garlic. At about seven o'clock the bell
rang for supper.
The small châteaux with which the whole country hereabouts is strewn,
notwithstanding that most of them have been partially rebuilt or grossly
and wantonly mangled without a purpose such as the rational desire of
increasing homely comfort may excuse, even when combined with no respect
for the past, nevertheless contain numerous details that call up in the
mind pictures of the life of old France. In the rat-haunted lofts and
lumber-rooms may still be seen, worm-eaten and covered with dust, the
_cacolet_--a wooden structure shaped like the gable roof of a house, and
which, when set upon a horse's back, afforded sitting accommodation for two
or three persons on each side. There are people who can still remember, on
the roads of Périgord, the _cacolets_ carrying merry parties to marriage
feasts and other gatherings. In a few of the great dining-rooms the visitor
will still notice the _alcôve volante_--a bedstead, that is a little house
in itself, put into a cosy quiet nook where a person can get into bed
without being observed by others in the room. A pretty sentiment caused it
to be especially reserved for the grandmothers, who, stretched upon the
warm feathers on the winter evenings, could rest their weary limbs while
listening to the talk of their descendants and friends, until drowsiness
began to make confusion of the present and the past, and then they would
pull the cords which closed the curtains and go to sleep. Poor old ladies,
now in their graves under the paving-stones of little churches or beneath
the grass of rural cemeteries, how happy for them that they did not dream
of the future in their snug alcôves near the fire--of a revolution that
would kill or scatter their descendants, and of the strangers to their
blood who would lie in their beds!
The detached dovecot is seen in almost every old manorial garden. Although
pigeons are seldom kept in it, the structure has been preserved because of
its usefulness for various purposes and the solidity of its masonry. In
some of them is to be seen the old spiral ladder or staircase winding like
a serpent round the interior wall from the ground to the domed or pointed
roof. By means of this ladder the pigeons could be easily taken from their
nests as they were wanted. These great dovecots are an interesting remnant
of feudalism. Down to the Revolution the right of keeping pigeons was still
a _droit seigneurial_. To those who enjoyed the privilege, the business was
therefore a profitable one, for the birds fed largely at other people's
expense.
It is rare to find the ancient walls and towers which stud the hills that
rise above these valleys in the hands of families who owned them even in
the last century. Terror of the Revolutionists caused most of the small
nobility of the country to forsake their homes and lands, which were
consequently sold by the State _révolutionnairement_, and they who acquired
them were thrifty, sagacious people of the agricultural, mercantile, or
official class, whose political principles bent easily before the wind that
was blowing, and whose savings enabled them to profit by the misfortunes of
those who had so long enjoyed the advantages of a privileged position. The
descendants of the men who seized their opportunity, and who purchased the
estates of the refugees--often at the price 'of an old song'--generally
cultivate anti-Republican politics, for they have the best of reasons to
be suspicious of the 'great and glorious principles' by virtue of which
property was made to change hands so unceremoniously at the close of the
last century.
The present owners of most of the country houses in Périgord, whether they
belong to the old families or the new families, whether they put the noble
particle before their names or not, have very much the same habits and
manners. Not a few of them have never been to Paris, and in speech they
often use old French forms, which sound strange in the ears of the
modernized society of the North. Although the accent is often drawling
or sing-song, their language is more grammatically correct than that now
ordinarily used in conversation. They observe the true distinction of the
tenses with an exactitude that sounds stiff and pedantic to those French
people who move about, and who consider that they live in the 'world.' To
the unprejudiced foreigner, however, it is not unpleasant to hear this
old-fashioned literary French spoken in an easy, simple manner that removes
all suspicion of affectation.
In the relations of master and servant, something of the old régime still
survives. The master still says _tu_ and _toi_ to his servant; but if the
latter were to take the liberty of replying with the same pronoun, his
insolence would be considered quite unpardonable. And yet no people appear
to be troubled less with false pride than the class of whom I am speaking.
Relatively large landowners, whose names count for a good deal in the
district, think there is nothing derogatory in sending a maidservant to
market to sell the surplus fruit and eggs. Those who buy are equally
practical. They haggle over sous with their friends' servant just as if she
were a peasant driving a bargain on her own account. It is the exception,
however, when to this keen appreciation of money warm-hearted hospitality
and disinterested kindness are not joined.
There was a château combining the country house, the farm, and the ruin on
the summit of the steep hill that rose above our little island just beyond
the river. It often tempted me to climb to it, and one day at the end
of summer I wended my way up the stony path. I met with that courteous
reception which so rarely fails in France to place the visitor completely
at his ease. I was surprised to find how extensive the ramparts were, and
how easily the castle behind the modern house could have been rendered
habitable. But all the windows were open to the weather. A Gothic chapel
with groined vaulting at the base of one of the towers had been turned into
a coach-house. Following an old servant who carried a lantern along a dark
passage leading to an _oubliette_, I saw what looked like a large cattle
trough, and inquired the use of it in such a place. It was put to no
purpose now, was the reply, but it was intended for keeping a whole bullock
in salt. In the tumultuous ages it was always necessary to be prepared to
take immediate measures in view of a siege, and at no period more than
during the wars of religion, when the owners of these castles, whether they
were Huguenots or Catholics, had to be continually on the alert. When there
was fighting to be done, a salted bullock gave less trouble than a live
one.
The old man, having tied a string to the top of the lantern, let it down
through the round hole of the _oubliette_ until it touched the ground many
feet below. Then he told me that, when the dungeon was discovered years
ago, immediately beneath the opening an old tree was found stuck about with
rusty blades and spikes, with their points turned upwards. This story was
confirmed by others.
In the garden on the edge of the cliff the myrtle flourished in a little
Provence sheltered from the cold winds; the physalis--beautiful southern
weed--now laid its large bladders of a vivid scarlet along the edges of the
paths, and the walls flamed with the red fruit of the pomegranate.
The most important feudal ruin in this district is that of the Château
de Grignols, the cradle of the Talleyrand family. It was raised by Hély
Talleyrand, Seigneur de Grignols, at the close of the twelfth century. Much
of the outer wall and a few fragments of the interior buildings remain.
I lived a good deal upon the water when I was not in my hermitage under the
trees or wandering across country. I found in the water an ever-growing
interest and charm. It often drew me from my work, for my canoe was on the
canal only a few paces from my dwelling. On each side the high banks were
glorious with their many-coloured clothing of summer flowers. There were
patches of purple thyme, of blue stachys, and yellow gallium; there were
countless spikes of yellow agrimony and heads of wild carrot, and white
ox-eyes looked out from amidst the long grasses like snowflakes of summer.
Near the water's edge, mingling with sedges, flags, marsh-mallows,
bur-reed, and alisma, were the golden flowers of the shrubby lysimachia
in dense multitudes, while from the canal itself rose many a spike of
water-stachys, with here and there blossoming butomus, near the fringe of
the banks. Then there were the pond-weeds, and other true water-plants,
whose summer luxuriance nearly stopped the navigation of the canal, and
whose pollen in July, collecting near the locks, lay there upon the water
like a thick scum. As my little boat moved over them, I could note all the
wondrous beauty and delicacy of the strange foliage that lives below the
air, and preserves so much of the character of the earliest vegetation of
the earth.
It is twilight, and I am paddling up to the river, gliding now along by one
bank and now by another. A humming-bird moth, that seems to have been just
created, for the eye cannot follow its movement in the dusky air, appears
suddenly upon the topmost flower of a stachys, and in another moment it has
vanished. Upon the broader and more open river the day appears to revive.
There is a faint lustre upon the distant chalky hills and their corn-fields
that rise against the quiet sky. But the pale moon just above them is
brightening; already the rays are glinting upon the water. A little later
the boat is moving up a long brilliant track, where small waves lap and
quiver like liquid fire. It is now night, and the forms of the alders in
the air and on the water have become weird and awful. I often come alone
at this hour, or later, to be filled with the horror of them. There is a
strong fascination in their terrible and fantastic shapes, which may be
because the sublime and the horrible are so thinly separated. Rarely does
the same tree wear the same ghostly appearance when seen a second time, and
a shape that may seem to one person appallingly life-like may convey no
meaning to another.
Had the gendarmes met me while water-wandering at night, they would
certainly have concluded that I was a fish-poacher. All fishing by night
in French rivers and streams is illegal, but it is much practised
notwithstanding.
There are many carp in the Isle, weighing from fifteen to twenty pounds,
but they are very rarely caught. The river is full of very deep pools,
caused by the washing away of the sand down to the solid rock, and the carp
seldom get within reach of a net except when they are stirred up and washed
out of their lairs in time of flood. Then, when an old fish gets entangled
in a net, it is almost certain to break through it, so that it is not with
a feeling of pure pleasure that the fisherman recognises by the weight and
tug that he has thrown his meshes over one of these monsters. Nor does any
better success attend the angler--at all events, the angler who is known in
these parts. It is quite an extraordinary event when a carp weighing more
than five pounds is taken with the line. The bait commonly used is boiled
maize or a piece of boiled chestnut. There is another method of hooking
these fish which I have seen practised on the quays at Périgueux. The
fisher has a very strong rod, and also a strong line many yards long, at
the end of which is fastened, not a bait, but a piece of lead two or three
inches in length. To this large hooks are fixed, which barbs turned in all
directions. The man, whose eyes have become very keen with practice, sees
some carp coming up or going down the stream, and, throwing the plummet far
out into the river, he draws it rapidly through the water, across the spot
where he believes the fish then to be. It is not often that he feels a tug,
but he does sometimes, and then follows a deadly struggle, which may result
in his landing a splendid carp that is worth more than he might earn by any
other industry in two days.
Among the peasants in this part of Périgord there is a deeply-engrained
superstitious horror of what is called a _rencontre_. If a person falls
suddenly ill, especially if his sickness be not a familiar ailment, he will
begin to probe his memory, and to ask himself if he has lately sat upon a
stone or the stump of a tree. If he remembers having done so, he murmurs,
unless he should be free from the popular superstition, 'Ah! I thought so.
This is a _rencontre!_'--by which he means that he has met one of the three
unholy reptiles, the snake, the toad, or the lizard, although it was hidden
under the stone or stump.
'Marie,' said I to an old farm woman who was hobbling about with a
rheumatic leg, 'what is the matter?'
Oh, mossieu,' said she, 'it's a _rencontre_. I sat down the other day upon
a stone.'
This made me inquire what was meant by a _rencontre_.
I will only set down a few impressions of Périgueux, there being already
quite enough written respecting the ancient capital of the Petrocorii.
The upper part of the town commands a pleasant view of the valley of the
curving Isle, with the wooded hills that lead away towards the upper and
wilder country of Périgord; but it is in the lower town near the river,
where the odours are strong, that the interest really lies. Here is the
cathedral of St. Front, a church in the Byzantine style of the tenth
century, and closely imitated from St. Mark's at Venice. It is impossible
to see it now, however, without regret and disappointment. In many it stirs
both sorrow and anger. It is no longer one of the most precious monuments
of old France. What we see now on the site of St. Front is a new church,
scrupulously rebuilt, it is true, according to the original plan, and with
a great deal of the original material, but its interest is that which
belongs to a model: its venerable character, with all the associations of
the past, is gone. Whether those responsible for the complete demolition of
the ancient structure when it threatened to fall and become a heap of ruins
were right or wrong in their decision is a technical question on which very
few persons are now competent to give an opinion. The plan of the church is
a Greek cross, and, like St. Mark's and St. Sophia's, it has five domes;
but the building has, nevertheless, a feature of its own which makes it one
of the most original of churches. It possesses a Byzantine tower.
[Illustration: THE TOUR DE VÉSONE.]
In common with many towns of Southern France, Périgueux shows remarkable
vestiges of different races and dominations. Remnants of Roman or
Gallo-Roman architecture stand with others that belong to the dawn of
mediaeval art, and others, again, that are marked by the florid and
graceful fancy of the Renaissance. The ruins of the amphitheatre are
insignificant compared to those at Nimes and Arles, and there is no
beautiful example of Roman art like the Maison Carrée at Nimes; but there
is an exceedingly curious monument of antiquity, which was long a puzzle to
archaeologists, but which is now generally believed to be the _cella_ of
a Gallo-Roman temple dedicated to the city's tutelary divinities. It is
called the Tour de Vésone, and, indeed, it was supposed for centuries to
have been originally a tower. Its cylindrical shape and its height (ninety
feet) give it all the appearance of one. It is built of rubble, faced
inside and out with small well-shaped stones, and has chains of brick in
the upper part. The circle of the tower is no longer complete, for about a
fourth of the wall has been broken down from top to bottom. The ground
is strewn with fragments of immense columns and entire capitals, some
Corinthian, others Tuscan. These, doubtless, were parts of the peristyle,
which, with the exception of such scattered fragments, has quite
disappeared. There is something decidedly barbaric in the fantastic
structure that has come down to us, and it is difficult to understand the
motive of its height. Such a cylinder rising far above the peristyle could
not have had a classic effect. This ruin stands in an open field, and the
foulness of the spot, although quite in accordance with the Southern manner
of showing respect for antiquities, is nevertheless a disgrace to the
ideals of modern Vesunna.
Another curiosity of the lower town is the ruin of a very early mediaeval
castle, said to have been built by Wulgrin, surnamed Taillefer, the first
of the hereditary Counts of Périgord. Close to this picturesque ruin is
one of the ancient gateways of the town. It goes by the name of La Porte
Normande, but its slightly pointed arch disposes of the suggestion that the
Normans were in some manner concerned in its construction.
[Illustration: THE 'NORMAN GATE' AT PÉRIGUEUX.]
What interested me most at Périgueux was something that very few strangers,
or even townspeople, for that matter, ever see, because, it is hidden from
public view. This is a considerable fragment of one of the early walls
of the town, which, tradition says, was thrown up in great haste at the
approach of the Normans during one of the incursions of these adventurers
up the valley of the Dordogne and, its tributary, the Isle, in the tenth
century. It is a bit of wall that speaks to us in a language by no means
common. It is not built of stones such as could be found anywhere in all
ages, but is put together with the fragments of temples and palaces which
even now tell of the power and splendour of Rome. The shafts of fluted
columns, capitals wearing the acanthus, pieces of cornice and frieze, all
mortared together with undistinguishable rubbish, bear testimony in the
quiet garden of the Ursuline convent to the vanity of human works. Vesunna,
splendid city of Southern Gaul, completely Latinized, with native poets,
orators, and historians speaking and writing the language of Virgil and
Cicero, raised temples, palaces, thermae, and a vast amphitheatre to be
used centuries later as material for building a wall to keep out the
Northern barbarians!
[Illustration: THE DRONNE AT BOURDEILLES.]