Produced by Carlo Traverso, Debra Storr, Sandra Brown,
Charles Franks and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team
EAST OF PARIS
SKETCHES IN THE GÂTINAIS, BOURBONNAIS, AND CHAMPAGNE
By Miss Betham-Edwards
CONTENTS
Chap.
INTRODUCTION
I.--MELUN
II.--MORET-SUR-LOING
III.--BOURRON
IV.--BOURRON--_continued_
V.--BOURRON--_continued_
VI.--LARCHANT
VII.--RECLOSES
VIII.--NEMOURS
IX.--LA CHARITÉ-SUR-LOIRE
X.--POUGUES
XL.--NEVERS AND MOULINS
XII.--SOUVIGNY AND SENS
XIII.--ARCIS-SUR-AUBE
XIV.--ARCIS-SUR-AUBE--_continued_
XV.--RHEIMS
XVI.--RHEIMS--_continued_
XVII.--SOULAINES AND BAR-SUR-AUBE
XVIII.--ST. JEAN DE LOSNE
XIX.--NANCY
XX.--IN GERMANISED LORRAINE
XXI.--IN GERMANISED ALSACE
INTRODUCTORY.
I here propose to zig-zag with my readers through regions of Eastern
France not described in any of my former works. The marvels of French
travel, no more than the _chefs-d’oeuvre_ of French literature, are
unlimited. Short of saluting the tricolour on Mont Blanc, or of echoing
the Marseillaise four hundred and odd feet underground in the cave of
Padirac, I think I may fairly say that I have exhausted France as
a wonder-horn. But quiet beauties and homely graces have also their
seduction, just as we turn with a sense of relief from “Notre Dame de
Paris” or “Le Père Goriot,” to a domestic story by Rod or Theuriet, so
the sweet little valley of the Loing refreshes after the awful Pass of
Gavarni, and soothing to the ear is the gentle flow of its waters after
the thundering Rhône. Majestic is the panorama spread before our eyes
as we pic-nic on the Puy de Dôme. More fondly still my memory clings
to many a narrower perspective, the view of my beloved Dijon from its
vine-clad hills or of Autun as approached from Pré Charmoy, to me, the
so familiar home of the late Philip Gilbert Hamerton. If, however,
the natural marvels of France, like those of any other country, can be
catalogued, French scenery itself offers inexhaustible variety. And so,
having visited, re-visited, and re-visited again this splendid hexagon
on the European map, I yet find in the choice of holiday resorts a
veritable _embarras de richesses_. And many of the spots here described
will, I have no doubt, be as new to my readers as they have been to
myself--_Larchant_ with its noble tower rising from the plain,
recalling the still nobler ruin of Tclemcen on the borders of the
Sahara--_Recloses_ with its pictorial interiors and grand promontory
overlooking a panorama of forest, sombre purplish green ocean unflecked
by a single sail--_Moret_ with its twin water-ways, one hardly knows
which of the two being the more attractive--_Nemours_, favourite haunt
of Balzac, memoralized in “Ursule Mirouët”--_La Charité_, from
whose old-world dwellings you may throw pebbles into the broad blue
Loire--_Pougues_, the prettiest place with the ugliest name, frequented
by Mme. de Sévigné and valetudinarians of the Valois race generations
before her time--_Souvigny_, cradle of the Bourbons, now one vast
congeries of abbatial ruins--_Arcis-sur-Aube_, the sweet riverside home
of Danton--its near neighbour, _Bar-sur-Aube_, connected with a bitterer
enemy of Marie Antoinette than the great revolutionary himself, the
infamous machinator of the Diamond Necklace. These are a few of the
sweet nooks and corners to which of late years I have returned again and
again, ever finding “harbour and good company.” And these journeys, I
should rather say visits, East of Paris led me once more to that sad
yearning France beyond the frontier, to homes as French, to hearts as
devoted to the motherland as when I first visited the annexed provinces
twenty years ago!
EAST OF PARIS
CHAPTER I
MELUN
Scores upon scores of times had I steamed past Melun in the Dijon
express, ever eyeing the place wistfully, ever too hurried, perhaps too
lazy, to make a halt. Not until September last did I carry out a long
cherished intention. It is unpardonable to pass and re-pass any French
town without alighting for at least an hour’s stroll!
Melun, capital of the ancient Gatinais, now chef-lieu of the Department
of Seine and Marne, well deserves a visit. Pretty as Melun looks from
the railway it is prettier still on nearer approach. The Seine here
makes a loop, twice curling round the town with loving embrace, its
walls and old world houses to-day mirrored in the crystal-clear river.
Like every other French town, small or great, Melun possesses its outer
ring of shady walks, boulevards lying beyond the river-side quarters.
The place has a busy, prosperous, almost metropolitan look, after the
village just left. [Footnote: For symmetry’s sake I begin these records
at Melun, although I halted at the place on my way from my third sojourn
at Bourron.] The big, bustling Hotel du Grand Monarque too, with its
brisk, obliging landlady, invited a stay. Dr. Johnson, perhaps the
wittiest if the completest John Bull who ever lived, was not far wrong
when he glorified the inn. “Nothing contrived by man,” he said, “has
produced so much happiness (relaxation were surely the better word?) as
a good tavern.” Do we not all, to quote Falstaff, “take our ease at our
inn,” under its roof throwing off daily cares, assuming a holiday mood?
A survey of the yard awoke another train of reflections. It really seems
as if the invention of the motor car were bringing back ante-railway
days for the tourist and the travelling world, recalling family coach
and post-chaise. The place was crowded with motor cars of all shapes
and sizes, some of these were plain, shabby gigs and carts of commercial
travellers, others, landaus, waggonettes and victorias of rich folks
seeing the world in their own carriage as their ancestors had done
generations before; one turn-out suggested royalty or a Rothschild, I
was about to say, rather I should name a Chicago store-keeper, since
American millionaires are the Haroun-el-Raschids of the twentieth
century. This last was a sumptuously fitted up carriage having a seat
behind for servants, accommodating eight persons in all. There was
also a huge box for luggage. It would be interesting to know how much
petroleum, electricity, or alcohol such a vehicle would consume in a
day. The manufacture of motor cars must be a very flourishing business
in France, next, I should say, to that of bicycles. Of these also there
was a goodly supply in the entrance hall of the inn, and the impetus
given to travel by both motor car and bicycle was here self-evident.
The Hotel du Grand Monarque literally swarmed with tourists, one and all
French folks taking their ease at their inn. And our neighbours do not
take their pleasure solemnly after the manner of the less impressionable
English. Stay-at-home as they have hitherto been, home-loving as they
essentially are, the atmosphere of an inn, the aroma of a holiday, fill
the Frenchman’s cup of hilarity to overflowing, rendering gayer the
gayest.
The invention and rapidly spreading use of the motor car in France shows
the French character under its revolutionary aspect, yet no people on
the face of the earth are in many respects so conservative. We English
folks want a new “Where is it?” for social purposes every year, the
majority of our friends and acquaintances changing their houses almost
as often as milliners and tailors change the fashion in bonnets and
coats. A single address book for France supplies a life-time. The
explanation is obvious. For the most part we live in other folks’ houses
whilst French folks, the military and official world excepted, occupy
their own. Revisit provincial gentry or well-to-do bourgeoisie after
an interval of a quarter of a century, you always find them where they
were. Interiors show no more change than the pyramids of Egypt. Not so
much as sixpence has been laid out upon new carpets or curtains. Could
grandsires and granddames return to life like the Sleeping Beauty, they
would find that the world had stood still during their slumber.
Melun possesses perhaps one of the few statues that may not be called
superfluous, and I confess I had been attracted thither rather by
memories of its greatest son than by its picturesque scenery and fine
old churches. The first translator of Plutarch into his native tongue
was born here, and as we should expect, has been worthily commemorated
by his fellow citizens. A most charming statue of Amyot stands in front
of the grey, turreted Hôtel de Ville. In sixteenth century doctoral
dress, loose flowing robes and square flat cap, sits the great
scholiast, as intently absorbed in his book as St. Jerome in the
exquisite canvas of our own National Gallery.
Behind the Hôtel de Ville an opening shows a small, beautifully kept
flower garden, just now a blaze of petunias, zinnias, and a second crop
of roses. Long I lingered before this noble monument, one only of the
many raised to Amyot’s memory, of whom Montaigne wrote:--
“Ignoramuses that we are, we should all have been lost, had not this
book (the translation of Plutarch) dragged us out of the mire; thanks to
it, we now venture to write and to discourse.”
And musing on the scholar and his kindred, a favourite line of
Browning’s came into my mind--
“This man decided not to live but to know.”
Indeed the whole of “A Grammarian’s Funeral” were here appropriate. Is
it not men after this type of whom we feel
“Our low life was the level’s and the night’s.
He’s for the morning”?
To my surprise I found the church of St. Aspais locked. A courteous
hair-dresser thereupon told me that all churches in Melun were closed
from noon till half past one, but that, as noon had only just struck,
if I were brisk I might possibly catch the sacristan. After a pretty hot
chase I succeeded in finding a deaf, decrepit, dingy old man who showed
me round the church, although evidently very impatient for his mid-day
meal. He informed me that this closing of churches at Melun had been
necessitated of late years by a series of robberies. From twelve till
half past one o’clock no worshippers are present as a rule, hence the
thieves’ opportunity. Unfortunately marauders do not strip beautiful
interiors of the tinselly gew-gaws that so often deface them; in this
respect, however, St. Aspais being comparatively an exception. Alike
within and without the proportions are magnificent, and the old stained
glass is not marred by modern crudities. I do not here by any means
exhaust the sights of this ancient town, from which, by the way,
Barbizon is now reached in twenty minutes, an electric tramway plying
regularly between Melun and that famous art pilgrimage.