hundred and forty-four it was, my good friend, when--don't be alarmed;
not when two travellers might have been observed slowly making their way
over that picturesque and broken ground by which the first chapter of a
Middle Age novel is usually attained--but when an English travelling
carriage of considerable proportions, fresh from the shady halls of the
Pantechnicon near Belgrave Square, London, was observed (by a very small
French soldier, for I saw him look at it) to issue from the gate of the
Hotel Meurice in the Rue Rivoli at Paris.
I am no more bound to explain why the English family travelling by this
carriage, inside and out, should be starting for Italy on a Sunday
morning, of all good days in the week, than I am to assign a reason
for all the little men in France being soldiers and all the big men
postilions, which is the invariable rule. But they had some sort of
reason for what they did, I have no doubt, and their reason for being
there at all was, as you know, that they were going to live in fair
Genoa for a year; and that the head of the family purposed in that space
of time to stroll about wherever his restless humor carried him.
And it would have been small comfort to me to have explained to the
population of Paris generally that I was that Head and Chief, and not
the radiant embodiment of good-humor who sat beside me in the person of
a French courier,--best of servants and most beaming of men. Truth to
say, he looked a great deal more patriarchal than I, who, in the shadow
of his portly presence, dwindled down to no account at all.
There was, of course, very little in the aspect of Paris--as we rattled
near the dismal Morgue and over the Pont Neuf--to reproach us for our
Sunday travelling. The wine-shops (every second house) were driving a
roaring trade; awnings were spreading, and chairs and tables arranging,
outside the cafes, preparatory to the eating of ices and drinking of
cool liquids later in the day; shoeblacks were busy on the bridges;
shops were open; carts and wagons clattered to and fro; the narrow,
uphill, funnel-like streets across the river were so many dense
perspectives of crowd and bustle, parti-colored nightcaps, tobacco
pipes, blouses, large boots, and shaggy heads of hair; nothing at that
hour denoted a day of rest, unless it were the appearance, here and
there, of a family pleasure-party, crammed into a bulky old lumbering
cab, or of some contemplative holiday-maker in the freest and easiest
dishabille, leaning out of a low garret window, watching the drying of
his newly-polished shoes on the little parapet outside (if a gentleman),
or the airing of her stockings in the sun (if a lady), with calm
anticipation.
Once clear of the never-to-be-forgotten-or-forgiven pavement which
surrounds Paris, the first three days of travelling towards Marseilles
are quiet and monotonous enough. To Sens. To Avallon. To Chalons. A
sketch of one day's proceedings is a sketch of all three, and here it
is.
We have four horses and one postilion, who has a very long whip, and
drives his team something like the courier of St. Petersburg in the
circle at Astley's or Franconi's, only he sits his own horse instead of
standing on him. The immense jack-boots worn by these postilions are
sometimes a century or two old, and are so ludicrously disproportionate
to the wearer's foot that the spur, which is put where his own heel
comes, is generally half-way up the leg of the boots. The man often
comes out of the stable-yard with his whip in his hand and his shoes on,
and brings out, in both hands, one boot at a time, which he plants on
the ground by the side of his horse with great gravity, until everything
is ready. When it is--and oh, Heaven! the noise they make about it!--he
gets into the boots, shoes and all, or is hoisted into them by a couple
of friends; adjusts the rope harness, embossed by the labors of
innumerable pigeons in the stables; makes all the horses kick and
plunge; cracks his whip like a madman; shouts "En route--hi!" and away
we go. He is sure to have a contest with his horse before we have gone
very far; and then he calls him a thief, and a brigand, and a pig, and
what not, and beats him about the head as if he were made of wood.
There is little more than one variety in the appearance of the country
for the first two days,--from a dreary plain to an interminable avenue,
and from an interminable avenue to a dreary plain again. Plenty of vines
there are, in the open fields, but of a short, low kind, and not trained
in festoons, but about straight sticks. Beggars innumerable there are,
everywhere, but an extraordinarily scanty population and fewer children
than I ever encountered. I don't believe we saw a hundred children
between Paris and Chalons. Queer old towns, drawbridged and walled, with
odd little towers at the angles, like grotesque faces, as if the wall
had put a mask on, and were staring down into the moat; other strange
little towers, in gardens and fields, and down lanes and in farm-yards;
all alone, and always round, with a peaked roof, and never used for any
purpose at all; ruinous buildings of all sorts; sometimes an hotel de
ville, sometimes a guard-house, sometimes a dwelling-house, sometimes a
chateau with a rank garden, prolific in dandelion, and watched over by
extinguisher-topped turrets and blink-eyed little casements, are the
standard objects, repeated over and over again.
Sometimes we pass a village inn, with a crumbling wall belonging to it,
and a perfect town of out-houses; and painted over the gate-way,
"Stabling for sixty horses," as indeed there might be stabling for sixty
score, were there any horses to be stabled there, or anybody resting
there, or anything stirring about the place but a dangling bush,
indicative of the wine inside, which flutters idly in the wind, in lazy
keeping with everything else, and certainly is never in a green old age,
though always so old as to be dropping to pieces. And all day long
strange little narrow wagons, in strings of six or eight, bringing
cheese from Switzerland, and frequently in charge, the whole line, of
one man, or even boy,--and he very often asleep in the foremost
cart,--come jingling past; the horses drowsily ringing the bells upon
their harness, and looking as if they thought (no doubt they do) their
great blue woolly furniture, of immense weight and thickness, with a
pair of grotesque horns growing out of the collar, very much too warm
for the midsummer weather.
Then there is the diligence, twice or thrice a day, with the dusty
outsides in blue frocks, like butchers; and the insides in white
nightcaps; and its cabriolet head on the roof, nodding and shaking like
an idiot's head; and its Young-France passengers staring out of window,
with beards down to their waists, and blue spectacles awfully shading
their warlike eyes, and very big sticks clinched in their national
grasp. Also the malle-poste, with only a couple of passengers, tearing
along at a real good daredevil pace, and out of sight in no time.
Steady old cures come jolting past, in such ramshackle, musty, rusty,
clattering coaches as no Englishman would believe in; and bony women
dawdle about in solitary places, holding cows by ropes while they feed,
or digging and hoeing, or doing field-work of a more laborious kind,
or representing real shepherdesses with their flocks,--to obtain an
adequate idea of which pursuit and its followers, in any country, it is
only necessary to take any pastoral poem, or picture, and imagine to
yourself whatever is most exquisitely and widely unlike the descriptions
therein contained.
You have been travelling along, stupidly enough, as you generally
do in the last stage of the day; and the ninety-six bells upon the
horses--twenty-four apiece--have been ringing sleepily in your ears
for half an hour or so; and it has become a very jog-trot, monotonous,
tiresome sort of business; and you have been thinking deeply about the
dinner you will have at the next stage; when down at the end of the long
avenue of trees through which you are travelling the first indication
of a town appears, in the shape of some straggling cottages; and the
carriage begins to rattle and roll over a horribly uneven pavement, ...
and here we are in the yard of the Hotel de l'Ecu d'Or....
The landlady of the Hotel de l'Ecu d'Or is here; and the landlord of the
Hotel de l'Ecu d'Or is here; and the femme de chambre of the Hotel de
l'Ecu d'Or is here; and a gentleman in a glazed cap, with a red beard
like a bosom friend, who is staying at the Hotel de l'Ecu d'Or, is here;
and Monsieur le Cure is walking up and down in a corner of the yard by
himself, with a shovel-hat upon his head, and a black gown on his back,
and a book in one hand, and an umbrella in the other; and everybody,
except Monsieur le Cure, is open-mouthed and open-eyed for the opening
of the carriage-door. The landlord of the Hotel de l'Ecu d'Or dotes to
that extent upon the courier that he can hardly wait for his coming down
from the box, but embraces his very legs and boot-heels as he descends.
"My courier! My brave courier! My friend! My brother!" The landlady
loves him, the femme de chambre blesses him, the garcon worships him.
The courier asks if his letter has been received. It has, it has. Are
the rooms prepared? They are, they are. The best rooms for my noble
courier. The rooms of state for my gallant courier; the whole house
is at the service of my best of friends! He keeps his hand upon the
carriage-door, and asks some other question to enhance the expectation.
He carries a green leathern purse outside his coat, suspended by a belt.
The idlers look at it; one touches it. It is full of five-franc pieces.
Murmurs of admiration are heard among the boys. The landlord falls upon
the courier's neck and folds him to his breast. He is so much fatter
than he was, he says. He looks so rosy and so well!...
The rooms are on the first floor, except the nursery for the night,
which is a great rambling chamber, with four or five beds in it; through
a dark passage, up two steps, down four, past a pump, across a balcony,
and next door to the stable. The other sleeping apartments are large and
lofty; each with two small bedsteads, tastefully hung, like the windows,
with red and white drapery. The sitting-room is famous. Dinner is
already laid in it for three; and the napkins are folded in cocked-hat
fashion. The floors are of red tile. There are no carpets, and not
much furniture to speak of; but there is abundance of looking-glass,
and there are large vases under glass shades filled with artificial
flowers, and there are plenty of clocks. The whole party are in motion.
The brave courier in particular, is everywhere, looking after the beds,
having wine poured down his throat by his dear brother the landlord, and
picking up green cucumbers,--always cucumbers; Heaven knows where he
gets them,--with which he walks about, one in each hand, like
truncheons.
Dinner is announced. There is very thin soup; there are very large
loaves,--one apiece; a fish; four dishes afterwards; some poultry
afterwards; a dessert afterwards; and no lack of wine. There is not much
in the dishes, but they are very good, and always ready instantly. When
it is nearly dark, the brave courier, having eaten the two cucumbers,
sliced up in the contents of a pretty large decanter of oil and another
of vinegar, emerges from his retreat below, and proposes a visit to the
Cathedral, whose massive tower frowns down upon the court-yard of the
inn. Off we go; and very solemn and grand it is in the dim light; so dim
at last that the polite old lantern-jawed sacristan has a feeble little
bit of candle in his hand to grope among the tombs with, and looks,
among the grim columns, very like a lost ghost who is searching for his
own.
Underneath the balcony, when we return, the inferior servants of the inn
are supping in the open air, at a great table; the dish, a stew of meat
and vegetables, smoking hot, and served in the iron caldron it was
boiled in. They have a pitcher of thin wine, and are very merry; merrier
than the gentleman with the red beard, who is playing billiards in the
light room on the left of the yard, where shadows with cues in their
hands and cigars in their mouths cross and recross the window
constantly. Still the thin cure walks up and down alone, with his book
and umbrella. And there he walks, and there the billiard-balls rattle,
long after we are fast asleep.
We are astir at six the next morning. It is a delightful day, shaming
yesterday's mud upon the carriage, if anything could shame a carriage in
a land where carriages are never cleaned. Everybody is brisk, and as
we finish breakfast the horses come jingling into the yard from the
post-house. Everything taken out of the carriage is put back again. The
brave courier announces that all is ready, after walking into every room
and looking all round it to be certain that nothing is left behind.
Everybody gets in. Everybody connected with the Hotel de l'Ecu d'Or is
again enchanted. The brave courier runs into the house for a parcel
containing cold fowl, sliced ham, bread, and biscuits for lunch, hands
it into the coach, and runs back again.
What has he got in his hand now? More cucumbers? No. A long strip of
paper. It's the bill.
The brave courier has two belts on this morning,--one supporting the
purse, another a mighty good sort of leathern bottle, filled to the
throat with the best light Bordeaux wine in the house. He never pays
the bill till this bottle is full. Then he disputes it.
He disputes it now violently. He is still the landlord's brother, but by
another father or mother. He is not so nearly related to him as he was
last night. The landlord scratches his head. The brave courier points
to certain figures in the bill, and intimates that if they remain there
the Hotel de l'Ecu d'Or is thenceforth and forever an hotel de l'ecu
de cuivre. The landlord goes into a little counting-house. The brave
courier follows, forces the bill and a pen into his hand, and talks more
rapidly than ever. The landlord takes the pen. The courier smiles. The
landlord makes an alteration. The courier cuts a joke. The landlord is
affectionate, but not weakly so. He bears it like a man. He shakes hands
with his brave brother, but he doesn't hug him. Still, he loves his
brother, for he knows that he will be returning that way one of these
fine days with another family, and he foresees that his heart will yearn
towards him again. The brave courier traverses all round the carriage
once, looks at the drag, inspects the wheels, jumps up, gives the word,
and away we go!
[And so onward they go, passing Chalons, which excites little
comment, and at length reaching Lyons.]
What a city Lyons is! Talk about people feeling at certain unlucky times
as if they had tumbled from the clouds! Here is a whole town that has
tumbled anyhow, out of the sky; having been first caught up, like other
stones that tumble down from that region, out of fens and barren places,
dismal to behold! The two great streets through which the two great
rivers dash, and all the little streets whose name is Legion, were
scorching, blistering, and sweltering. The houses, high and vast, dirty
to excess, rotten as old cheeses, and as thickly peopled. All up the
hills that hem the city in, these houses swarm; and the mites inside
were lolling out of the windows and drying their ragged clothes on
poles, and crawling in and out at the doors, and coming out to pant
and gasp upon the pavement, and creeping in and out among huge piles
and bales of fusty, musty, stifling goods, and living, or rather not
dying till their time should come, in an exhausted receiver. Every
manufacturing town melted into one would hardly convey an impression of
Lyons as it presented itself to me, for all the undrained, unscavengered
qualities of a foreign town seemed grafted there upon the native
miseries of a manufacturing one, and it bears such fruit as I would go
some miles out my way to avoid encountering again.
In the cool of the evening, or rather in the faded heat of the day,
we went to see the Cathedral, where divers old women, and a few dogs,
were engaged in contemplation. There was no difference in point of
cleanliness between its stone pavement and that of the streets; and
there was a wax saint, in a little box like a berth aboard ship, with a
glass front to it, whom Madame Tussaud would have nothing to say to, on
any terms, and which even Westminster Abbey might be ashamed of. If you
would know all about the architecture of this church, or any other, its
dates, dimensions, endowments, and history, is it not written in Mr.
Murray's Guide-Book, and may you not read it there, with thanks to him,
as I did?
For this reason, I should abstain from mentioning the curious clock in
Lyons Cathedral, if it were not for a small mistake I made in connection
with that piece of mechanism. The keeper of the church was very anxious
it should be shown; partly for the honor of the establishment and the
town, and partly, perhaps, because of his deriving a percentage from the
additional consideration. However that may be, it was set in motion, and
thereupon a host of little doors flew open, and innumerable little
figures staggered out of them, and jerked themselves back again, with
that special unsteadiness of purpose, and hitching in the gait, which
usually attaches to figures that are moved by clock-work. Meanwhile,
the sacristan stood explaining these wonders, and pointed them out,
severally, with a wand. There was a centre puppet of the Virgin Mary;
and close to her a small pigeon-hole, out of which another and a very
ill-looking puppet made one of the most sudden plunges I ever saw
accomplished; instantly flopping back again at sight of her, and banging
his little door violently after him. Taking this to be emblematic of the
victory over Sin and Death, and not at all unwilling to show that I
perfectly understood the subject, in anticipation of the showman, I
rashly said, "Aha! The Evil Spirit. To be sure. He is very soon
disposed of." "Pardon, monsieur," said the sacristan, with a polite
motion of his hand towards the little door, as if introducing
somebody,--"the Angel Gabriel!"
Soon after daybreak next morning we were steaming down the arrowy Rhone,
at the rate of twenty miles an hour, in a very dirty vessel full of
merchandise, and with only three or four other passengers for our
companions; among whom, the most remarkable was a silly, old,
meek-faced, garlic-eating, immeasurably polite Chevalier, with a dirty
scrap of red ribbon hanging at his button-hole, as if he had tied it
there to remind himself of something; as Tom Noddy, in the farce, ties
knots in his pocket-handkerchief.
For the last two days we had seen great sullen hills, the first
indications of the Alps, lowering in the distance. Now, we were rushing
on beside them; sometimes close beside them; sometimes with an
intervening slope, covered with vineyards. Villages and small towns
hanging in mid-air, with great woods of olives seen through the light
open towers of their churches, and clouds moving slowly on, upon the
steep acclivity behind them; ruined castles perched on every eminence;
and scattered houses in the clefts and gullies of the hills, made it
very beautiful. The great height of these, too, making the buildings
look so tiny that they had all the charm of elegant models; their
excessive whiteness, as contrasted with the brown rocks, or the sombre,
deep, dull, heavy green of the olive-tree, and the puny size and little
slow walk of the Liliputian men and women on the bank, made a charming
picture. There were ferries out of number, too; bridges; the famous Pont
d'Esprit, with I don't know how many arches; towns where memorable wines
are made; Vallence, where Napoleon studied; and the noble river,
bringing, at every winding turn, new beauties into view.
There lay before us, that same afternoon, the broken bridge of Avignon,
and all the city baking in the sun; yet with an underdone-pie-crust,
battlemented wall that never will be brown, though it bake for
centuries.
FROM NORMANDY TO PROVENCE.
DONALD G. MITCHELL.
["Fresh Gleanings; or, A New Sheaf from the Old Fields of
Continental Europe," an interesting and appreciative work of
travel by the "Ik Marvel" of literary fame, presents us with
the following picturesque account of some of the more
interesting cities of Normandy and Southern France, which can
scarcely fail to prove of interest to readers. Leaving Lyons,
our traveller makes a diligence journey to Limoges, in which
city we take up the thread of his route.]
We wish to take our stop at some not too large town of the interior, and
which shall it be,--Chalons-sur-Saone, with its bridge, and quays, and
meadows; or Dijon, lying in the vineyards of Burgundy; or Chateauroux,
in the great sheep plains of Central France; or Limoges, still more
unknown, prettily situated among the green hills of Limousin, and the
chief town of the department _Haute Vienne_?
Let it be just by the Boule d'Or, in the town last named, that I quit my
seat in the diligence. The little old place is not upon any of the great
routes, so that the servants of the inn have not become too republican
for civility, and a blithe waiting-maid is at hand to take our luggage.
A plain door-way in the heavy stone inn, and still plainer and steeper
stair-way, conduct to a clean, large chamber upon the first floor.
Below in the little salon some three or four are at supper. Join them
you may, if you please, with a chop nicely done, and a palatable _vin du
pays_.
It is too dark to see the town. You are tired with eight-and-forty hours
of constant diligence-riding,--if you have come from Lyons, as I
did,--and the bed is excellent.
The window overlooks the chief street of the place; it is wide and paved
with round stones, and dirty, and there are no sidewalks, though a town
of thirty thousand inhabitants. Nearly opposite is a cafe, with small
green settees ranged about the door, with some tall flowering shrubs in
green boxes; and even at eight in the morning two or three are loitering
upon their chairs and sipping coffee. Next door is the office of the
diligence for Paris. Farther up the street are haberdashery shops and
show-rooms of the famous Limoges crockery. Soldiers are passing by twos,
and cavalrymen in undress go sauntering by on fine coal-black horses;
and the guide-book tells me that from this region come the horses for
all the cavalry of France....
There are curious old churches, and a simple-minded, gray-haired
verger, to open the side chapels and to help you spell the names on
tombs. Not half so tedious will the old man prove as the automaton
cathedral-showers of England, and he spices his talk with a little wit.
There are shops, not unlike those of a middle-sized town in our country;
still, little air of trade, and none at all of progress. Decay seems to
be stamped on nearly all the country towns of France, unless so large as
to make cities, and so have a life of their own, or so small as to serve
only as market-towns for the peasantry....
Wandering out of the edge of the town of Limoges, you come upon hedges
and green fields, for Limousin is the Arcadia of France. Queer old
houses adorn some of the narrow streets, and women in strange
head-dresses look out of the balconies that lean half-way over. But
Sunday is their holiday time, when all are in their gayest, and when the
green walks encircling the town, laid upon that old line of ramparts
which the Black Prince stormed, are thronged with the population.
The bill at the _Boule d'Or_ is not an extravagant one; for as strangers
are not common, the trick of extortion is unknown. The waiting-maid
drops a courtesy, and gives a smiling _bon jour_, not surely unmindful
of the little fee she gets; but she never disputes its amount, and seems
grateful for the least. There is no "boots" or waiter to dog you over to
the diligence; nay, if you are not too old, or ugly, the little girl
herself insists upon taking your portmanteau, and trips across with it,
and puts it in the hands of the conductor, and waits your going
earnestly, and waves her hand at you, and gives you another "_bon
voyage_" that makes your ears tingle till the houses of Limoges and its
high towers have vanished, and you are a mile away, down the pleasant
banks of the river Vienne.